The Empire Trilogy (23 page)

And yet they were all ex-officers, these men, so Edward assured him later. One had to remember, though, that to be an officer in 1920 was not the same thing as being an officer in 1914. A lot of the older sort (their very qualities of bravery, steadfast obedience to the call of duty, chivalry and so forth acting as so many banana skins on the road to survival) had disappeared in the holocaust and had had to be replaced. It was also true that these new men, and the great number who would soon be following them to a meagre six weeks of police training at the Curragh, were among the least favourably placed of the countless demobilized officers who now found themselves having to earn a living once more. All the same, though one made allowances (and Edward was always ready to make allowances for men who had served in the trenches), there
were
limits. The old kind, the officer who was also a gentleman, would never have gone about frightening old ladies. So thought Edward. What did the Major think?

The Major agreed, but thought to himself that these “men from the trenches” who were being paid a pound a day to keep a few wild Irishmen in order might well have trouble taking anything very seriously—whether the Irish, the old ladies, or their own selves.

At the same time he was disturbed by their presence. These men (individually they were charming, Edward told him) were unpredictable and still estranged from the accepted standards of life in peacetime—not that one could call Ireland very peaceful these days. As he was passing the Prince Consort wing a day or two later a window exploded in a sparkling burst of splinters, a laughing head appeared and a hand was held out to see if it was raining. Occasionally too one heard pistol shots and laughter in the long summer evenings; Edward had laid out a pistol-range in the clearing behind the lodge where the I.R.A. notice had been posted. In no time at all the notice had melted away under a hail of bullets and hung in unrecognizable shreds. One day the Major picked up a dead rabbit on the edge of the lawn. Its body was riddled with bullets.

This rabbit, as it happened, had been a favourite of the Major's. Old and fat, it had been partly tamed by the twins when they were small children. They had lost interest, of course, as they grew older, and no longer remembered to feed it. The rabbit, however, had not forgotten the halcyon days of carrots and dandelion leaves. Thinner and thinner as time went by, it had nevertheless continued to haunt the fringes of the wood like a forsaken lover. Poor rabbit! Moved and angry (but the “men from the trenches” were not to know that this was not a wild rabbit), the Major went to break the news to the twins, who were down by the tennis courts trying to persuade Seán Murphy to teach them how to drive the Standard (though Edward had forbidden this until they were older). The twins were not as upset as the Major expected them to be.

“Can we eat him?” they wanted to know.

“He's already buried.”

“We could dig him up,” Faith suggested. “Aren't rabbits' feet supposed to be lucky?”

But the Major said he had forgotten where the grave was.

“Were the bullet-holes bad?”

“How d'you mean? They were bad for the rabbit.”

“No, I was just thinking we could have made a fur hat,” said Charity, “if there weren't too many holes in him.”

“I say, Brendan, you aren't any good at arithmetic, are you? Daddy has set that dreadful tutor person on us and now he's threatening to look at our homework when it's been corrected.”

“Try Mr Norton. He's supposed to be good at that sort of thing.”

Mr Norton was a man in his seventies, a recent arrival at the Majestic; he had the reputation, fostered by himself, of having been a mathematical genius, drained in his youth, however, of energy and fortune by a weakness for beautiful women.

“We asked him...”

“But he always wants us to sit on his knee as if we were children.”

“And his breath smells horrid.”

Now that the Imperial Bar had been rendered uninhabitable by the colony of cats the Major sometimes took one of Edward's motor cars into Kilnalough in the evening for a drink at the Golf Club. There one evening he met Boy O'Neill, the solicitor, who greeted him like an old friend, although it was almost a year since the Peace Day parade when they had last met. O'Neill's appearance had changed dramatically and the Major could now scarcely recognize the timid, bony invalid he had first met at Angela's tea-party. Dressed in a baggy tweed jacket with bulging pockets, O'Neill appeared more swollen and aggressive than ever. There was a subdued irritation about the man which made one ill at ease when talking to him; one had the feeling that O'Neill was capable at any moment of abandoning reason altogether and finishing the argument with an uppercut. The Major sat watching the wads of jaw-muscle thickening as he talked: he had just finished eighteen holes, he declared, and had never felt better in his life. A hot shower, a drink, and now he was off home for a good meal. He unslung the clinking golf-bag from his shoulder and heaved it into an armchair, showing no impatience to depart. Eyeing the golf-bag, the Major noticed nestling between a mashie niblick, a jigger and the bulging wooden head of a driver what he at first thought was a club without a head—but no, it was the barrel of a rifle.

“No half measures, eh?”

“I can see you haven't been reading the papers, Major. Couple of army chaps were shot down on a links in Tipperary the other day...unarmed men. Didn't have a chance out there with no shelter, nobody passing by. The Shinners are brave enough when the other fella doesn't have a gun. They'll run like rabbits if they know you're armed.”

The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos? Every now and then, however, he would become aware with a feeling of shock that, for all its lack of pattern, the situation was different, and always a little worse.

Satisfied with the Major's look of dismay, O'Neill was now saying confidently that there was no need to worry. “All this will be cleared up now within five or six weeks, you can take it from me.”

“How d'you know?” asked the Major hopefully, thinking that perhaps O'Neill had heard something. “Two reasons,” declared O'Neill. “One, reinforcements are coming from England with this new recruiting campaign. Two, because of the nature of the Irish people. The Irish are a quick-tempered lot but they don't hold a grudge for long. They're good at heart, you see. Besides, they're too inefficient to get anywhere by themselves...I speak, mind you, of the Southerners; Ulstermen are a different kettle of fish. Besides, all Ireland's best leaders have been Englishmen; look at Parnell.”

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” agreed the Major dubiously. “It must end soon. That's what we used to say in the trenches,” he added with a faint smile.

“Of course, of course,” O'Neill said, failing to perceive the Major's irony. “You can take my word for it. I've just been having a drink with the army lads we have here now and I don't think they'll stand for much nonsense from Paddy Pig.”

“You mean the men staying at the Majestic? I didn't think they had much time for us locals.”

“They're splendid chaps, you can take it from me,” replied O'Neill, who was now taking off his bulging jacket and showed less sign of leaving than ever. “It's just that they don't really know who they can trust over here and, frankly, I don't blame them for that. Come in with me now to the bar and I'll introduce you.”

“Really, thanks all the same...” protested the Major, but O'Neill was already on his feet and beckoning imperiously with a forearm as thick as a leg of lamb. The Major followed him reluctantly. O'Neill's studded shoes clicked on the tiles of the corridor and bit into the worn wood of the locker room where a fat naked gentleman was vigorously towelling his quivering bottom. They passed through into the Members' Bar.

“Just a minute,” the Major said. “There's someone I must say hello to.”

Mr Devlin, dapper and smiling, was hastening towards him. He was delighted to see the Major back amongst them once more and must express his thanks for the kindness he had shown to his daughter Sarah on her way to France and how was the Major's dear auntie who had also been so kind...(“Ah, deceased is she? Indeed now, I'm sorry to hear it.”) And was the Major himself in better health than he had been? It must have been a great worry and a terrible grief for him to be losing his auntie like that...And as for Sarah she would be back one of these days and he knew that she would look forward to seeing the Major as much as he himself did and besides they would probably be meeting here at the links from now on because he had “a little job to do”...He paused expectantly.

“Oh?”

Yes, he'd be spending some considerable time here in the evenings because he had been elected treasurer, there was a notice on the notice-board, the Major probably hadn't had a chance to see it yet. “And it's all thanks to the influence of a certain person who has been very good to me and my family, very good...I'll say no more...it's a great honour.”

The “men from the trenches,” four of them, were sitting together at the curve of the bar by a window looking out over the eighteenth green and the gently ascending slope of fairway that led up to it. None of the members, apart from O'Neill, were sitting near them, and for a good reason. They had caused some dismay, the Major had heard, by installing themselves here without invitation; after all, there was a lounge available for ladies and non-members (providing that they were respectable); the secretary had affably pointed this out on the occasion of their first visit. They had listened politely enough; there had not been a scene. But though there had not been a scene the trouble was that they had not moved either. The secretary's smile had to some extent congealed on his lips but, as he explained to a special meeting of the committee, these fellows were, after all, over here risking their lives to maintain law and order in Ireland (not to mention the fact that they also happened to be armed to the teeth), so one did not want to deal too harshly with them, throw them out on their ears and so forth. The committee had pondered the problem and come up with a solution brilliant in its simplicity. The “men from the trenches” should be invited to become members. The secretary had been dispatched there and then, on the spot, to deliver this generous invitation...But he had returned almost immediately with the news that they had declined. Once more they had listened politely while he talked about members' fees, rules, rights and obligations and then said, “No thanks.” It was preposterous, everyone agreed that it was. All the same, the objection to dealing harshly with them, the one about risking their lives to maintain law and order (as well as the other one), remained and one could not simply ignore it. In the end, after much discussion, a notice had been posted on the bulletin board announcing that all
senior
personnel of the R.I.C. had been declared honorary members for the duration of the emergency (one couldn't, of course, open the doors to a horde of other ranks, splendid fellows though some of them no doubt were). The Major, who thought the secretary a pompous ass, had enjoyed this affair. But now that he saw the men sitting there, cold and calm, he had to admit that he would not like to have been the person with the job of ordering them to leave.

“Back again like a bad penny,” O'Neill was saying with chilling heartiness. “Want you to meet an old pal, Major Archer. Now I wonder if I can get this straight...Captain Bolton, Lieutenants...let me see, Pike, Berry, and Foster-Smith. How's that for a memory, eh?”

“Sergeants now, old boy,” said Foster-Smith, whose prominent teeth and thinning hair gave him a foolish appearance; he was very slight, his breeches hung in folds from thighs that were no thicker than wine-bottles.

It was Pike whose head the Major had seen appearing through the broken window at the Majestic; he looked a jolly fellow, but the eyes above his plump blue cheeks showed a disturbing intelligence and his frequent laughter seemed perfunctory. Berry was younger than the others; his sandy hair was cut so short that it stood up like the bristles of a hairbrush.

“Bit of a comedown,” he was saying. “Not so much hobnobbing with officers now that we've joined the unwashed O.R.” He glanced slyly at the Major. Everyone laughed except Captain Bolton, who merely smiled faintly. O'Neill, red with mirth, laughed louder than anyone.

Captain Bolton's eyes moved from one or other of the lieutenants to the Major in a detached, incurious way. There was something about his powerful jaw that was familiar to the Major; it was a moment before he realized what it was. These were the strong regular features (a face without any particular identity) which he had observed that sculptors frequently chose for war memorials. He could easily imagine Bolton frozen in bronze into some heroic posture. Put a helmet on his head, a bronze flag in his hand, drape a few dying bronze comrades around his knees...But Captain Bolton was very much alive and proved it by saying to the barman in a mild tone:

“Another round quick sharp, Paddy, you dirty Shinner, and put it on our account...”

“And send it to the King,” added Pike. “If he won't pay send it to the Lord of Wipers.”

O'Neill explained the reason for introducing the Major to them: namely, the fact that they were neighbours. The Major too lived under Edward Spencer's roof at the Majestic.

“Spencer has two lovely daughters,” Foster-Smith said, showing no interest in O'Neill's information.

“I've got a lovely daughter too,” offered O'Neill winking broadly. “Want to see her picture?” And after a moment's fumbling he produced a tattered photograph of Viola. While “the men from the trenches” were studying it O'Neill winked again, this time at the Major. The Major turned away. As he was leaving Bolton called after him: “Tell the old grannies that the next one we catch we'll cut her up in pieces and put her in a sack.”