The Empire Trilogy (27 page)

“I shall never believe another word you say,” the Major told her sternly.

There was another rumour believed by old Mrs Rice and the Misses Johnston, Laverty and Bagley (and at least half believed by the other ladies) to the effect that all the I.R.A. leaders spoke fluent German and that those mad women (Maud Gonne and the Gore-Booth girl who had married the man with the unpronounceable name) had both been mistresses of the Kaiser. As a supplement, Mr Norton indicated
sotto voce
to the Major that poor old Kaiser Bill had found them insatiable and had permanently impaired his health in an effort to uphold his honour.

Miss Staveley, as befitted her status at the Majestic, had a rumour vended and believed exclusively by herself but which nevertheless chilled for a moment any old lady who heard it: a scheme was afoot whereby every butcher in the country, whether pork or beef, would rise as one man and take their cleavers to the local gentry.

Yet the rumour which the Major liked most of all came from no less a person than Edward himself. He had heard, though it was probably “utter bilge,” that Dublin Castle's water supply had been deliberately poisoned and the entire Executive laid low with the exception of a handful of the heaviest whiskey drinkers. These latter were desperately trying to conceal the situation while they coped with it. But what could they do? They were in a situation reminiscent of classical tragedy. The very elixir which had saved their lives now had them groping through an impenetrable alcoholic fog. As one cheerful intoxicated manoeuvre followed another, Sinn Fein prepared to strike a mortal blow at Ireland's heart.

“Fatuous,” smiled the Major.

“It does seem a shade far-fetched, but one never knows, particularly these days.”

Yet if the Major was tempted to smile at some of these rumours he was always sobered quickly enough when he opened the newspaper. Since his return to Kilnalough not a single day had gone by without news of a raid or shooting or terrorist attack somewhere in Ireland. Indeed, these raids had become so numerous that since the end of May only the major disasters found their way into the main columns of the
Irish Times,
the remainder being relegated to a brief numbered list which appeared daily under the heading CATALOGUE OF CRIME or CAMPAIGN OF OUTRAGE.

1. Londonderry City. At 10.50 p.m. on Thursday, while Constables McDonough and Collis were on duty, they were fired at from a revolver, the bullet striking a wall beside where they were standing.

2. On the morning of Wednesday John Niland, Co. Galway, found that during the night the tails had been cut off nine cattle, some two or three inches of the fleshy part having been cut off in each case.

3. At 11.35 p.m. on Thursday three masked men, two of them armed, entered the house of Thomas Flattery, a candidate for the district councillorship, and asked him to sign a paper not to contest the election. He refused. The leader then said: “Go on your knees and make an Act of Contrition.” Mr Flattery said: “I am prepared to die.” Two raiders kept revolvers pointed at him, a third kept his wife from moving, and a fourth from outside the door said: “Shoot the dog.”

4. On Monday, at Ballyhaise, Co. Cavan, a large glass panel was broken in the Protestant church, and a bottle of wine stolen from the vestry.

5. Co. Cavan. Samuel Fife, postman, Cavan district, received the following letter through the post: “Fife, you have escaped the Huns, but should you come to Arvagh your days are numbered. Take this as final and prepare for death. The White Boys.”

6. On Wednesday the house of T. Box, Mountbellew, Co. Galway, was fired into. Last week his potato ridges were torn up and destroyed.

7. Co. Mayo. Patrick McAndrew, water bailiff, received a letter: “Death notice. I think it has come to the time of the day when no man will be allowed to save the fish for an English dog. If you do, you are doomed. Rory of the Rivers.”

8. Co. Kerry. Sergeant Coghlan received a letter: “You have been a good and diligent servant of the Crown so it is high time to end your gallop. I now advise you not to chance a sin on your soul as the reward we give good and faithful servants is 1–2 oz. of lead dead weight. For the future you are branded as a traitor. Our governor, Sinn Fein, has decided it.”

Before getting into bed that night the Major doused the candles and stood for a moment at the window looking out towards the invisible cornfields. In an hour or so, perhaps, men would appear out of the shadows like rodents out of the woodwork, and set to work reaping Edward's corn by the dim, intermittent moonlight. Perhaps they were already out there. He yawned and got into bed. In a way it was pleasant to fall asleep thinking of the men working out there—silently, a faint swish of reaping sickles, a soft whisper, the muffled creak of a cartwheel. But of course by now they would know that Edward was on to their game and they would not come. It was pleasant, the summer night. A silent gale of sleep blew over the dark countryside, inclining the corn in waves, now this way, now that. He was happy, in spite of everything. Edward had been about to tell him, waiting for the twins to appear wearing Angela's clothes, about the one time in his life that he had been really happy. “I must ask him,” the Major told himself as he fell asleep.

The Major was asleep on his back in a stiff military posture, feet together, hands by his sides, dreaming of Sarah. Later he lay on his stomach and for a while was almost conscious. The room was dark but there was a pink glow on the wall opposite the window. He sat up. There was a scraping sound by the dressing-table.

“Who's there?” he whispered.

A match flared and dipped towards the branched candle-stick, lighting first one candle, then the other. It was Edward, haggard, in a dressing-gown.

“Ah!” exclaimed the Major joyfully. “I was just going to ask you something...” He stopped, unable to think what it was.

Edward threw open the window. With his hands on the sill he leaned out. Gradually coming to his senses, the Major sleepily pulled on his bedroom slippers and reached for his dressing-gown. Even before he reached the window he had begun to realize that something was wrong. He had not been asleep long enough; it was too dark for it to be dawn. He stared past Edward's head at the distant lake of flame. The cornfields were blazing furiously on each side of the valley beyond the sloping ridge. All around them the blackness was perfect and impenetrable.

“Did you do this?”

“Don't be a damn fool!”

“But why should
they
?”

“How the devil should I know?”

By now there was nothing to do but watch it burn. It took hardly any time at all.

Now in the Prussian officer's field-glasses there was no waving corn to be seen, only an expanse of blackened earth. Here and there, where the corn had been still a trifle green, the stalks had not burned to the ground but stood up in scabrous rings and patches, making the Major think of the worm-eaten scalps of young boys whom he had seen trailing round the golf-links. “The wanton burning of food,” he thought. “As senseless as the plague.” Word had spread in the neighbourhood that Edward had burned the crop himself so that the country people should not have it. The Major guiltily remembered that this had been his own first thought and would have liked to make amends, particularly as Edward had taken on his disabused air.

“Naturally everyone thinks me capable of burning my own crops,” he said wryly to the Major. “Why, I'll burn the blessed house down out of spite one of these days, I shouldn't be surprised.” And he went off chortling grimly.

But if Edward had not set fire to the field, who had? Surely not the peasants themselves, they needed the corn too badly.

“Brendan, you're not listening!”

“Yes, I am. I've heard every word you said. It's about a bathing-costume.”

And still, it could have been an accident, a dropped match, perhaps, or a smouldering cigarette. Or perhaps it was one of those spontaneous fires that sometimes occur in hot weather, a fragment of broken glass catching the rays of the sun, or some such thing.

“Brendan, do you understand, we want eightpence. You're not listening again!”

“Yes, I am. What d'you want eightpence for?”

“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 paper —but told nobody what he intended to do with it. As the days passed, the old ladies continued to huddle in shivering groups like nomads round a camp-fire while the Major's breath steamed up one window after another in various parts of the house. From one or other of these windows he would spot Edward stalking down the drive, oblivious of the water that beat heavily on his tweed cap and raised a faint spray from the shoulders of his trench coat. Very often this trench coat sagged heavily on one side and the Major glimpsed the butt of a revolver protruding from the pocket. Once he hurried after Edward with an umbrella, afraid that he might be about to do something foolish. But Edward was simply making his way towards the pistol-range. There the Major saw him standing at the edge of the clearing under the dripping trees, his cheeks scalded purple by the cold deluge, right arm raised stiff and straight to fire at...it was by no means clear what he was firing at, perhaps at a dandelion that grew uncomfortably from a crevice in the lodge wall. The hand on the end of this stiff arm wobbled violently between the explosions, but Edward's face was impassive, dead. A thin needle of water streamed without interruption from the metal eye on the end of the butt. The Major withdrew into the sodden shrubbery and made his way thoughtfully up the drive with the rain drumming on his umbrella.

On the following day, however, the rain came to a stop and gave way to weak intermittent sunshine. The change in weather seemed to improve Edward's spirits, for, as the Major was being dragged off by the twins for a swim, he called out cheerfully from the library window: “Don't let those two little beasts drown you, Brendan.”

The two little beasts looked adorable. Their attempts to make practical bathing-suits from the pattern had ended in failure and tantrums of impatience, but by a lucky chance new bathing-suits had been sent to them by a remote aunt in London, a half-sister of Edward's, reputed to be rather “fast” although married to a clergyman. The bathing-costumes she had chosen, certainly, were the most daring the Major had ever seen, sleeveless and with only the most perfunctory of skirts. Hardly had the rain stopped when the twins donned these scanty garments and set out for the strand. The Major himself was a poor swimmer and although he had pulled on a woollen costume borrowed from Edward (Edward being considerably stouter, it hung loosely over the Major's flat stomach) he lacked enthusiasm; besides, he had heard that the water on the coast of Wexford was freezing even on the hottest day of summer. Consequently, he hoped to avoid entering it.