The Empire Trilogy (39 page)

The Major's sleep was as short and disturbed as it had been during his convalescence in hospital, punctuated by nightmares which continually returned him to the trenches. Any sharp noise, a book clapped down flat on a table or a dropped plate, would have him ducking involuntarily like a new recruit. During the hours of daylight, unless he was in the open air or in the safety and warmth of the linen room, he felt himself compelled to keep moving from room to room, corridor to corridor, upstairs and down. Only now did he consider that this compulsion might stem from the irrational fear that a trench-mortar shell was about to land in the spot where he had been standing a moment before, invisible explosions that tracked him from the lounge to the dining-room to the library to the billiard room, on and on, perpetually allow-ing him to escape by a fraction of a second. “I must pull myself together or Edward will notice that I'm showing the white feather.”

He needed some distraction—a visit to the theatre. He consulted the
Irish Times. Charley's Aunt
was being performed at the Gaiety and the advertisement said that it was “Enough to make a cat laugh.” But the Major dolefully suspected that it would fail to work on him. Besides, there was a special notice which said that the performance ended nightly at 9.15 p.m. sharp, and the idea of snatching a few quick chuckles before hastening home through the lawless streets did not appeal to him. All the same, he must take himself in hand. For an entire morning he forced himself to remain sitting in one place. The ladies, rebuffed in peevish tones, watched him from a distance and supposed in offended whispers that he had “got out of bed the wrong side.” After lunch, when he had satisfied his most urgent craving for movement, he did his best to restore himself to their good graces.

Shortly before tea-time he was strolling, hands in pockets, along a corridor on the third floor (since putting his foot through the floor-boards he seldom ventured higher) when a door opened round the corner, releasing a gale of laughter followed by footsteps and a rustling of skirts. A moment later and he had collided with a slim, dark girl who came running round the corner, laughing over her shoulder. In the dim light the Major failed to see her until the last moment. He just had time to catch her in his arms to prevent her falling.

“I beg your pardon!”

The girl's laughter changed to surprise and dismay. She disengaged herself and stood back awkwardly. The Major peered at her in the twilight. She was wearing a charming dress of black velvet with a white ruff and white lace cuffs; from the ruff her neck rose, slender and flushed, to a delicate pouting face. A fragrant perfume hung in the air. Abruptly, she turned and fled back into the room that the laughter was coming from. There was some urgent whispering (it was the twins and Viola, of course) and then the hilarity became greater than ever. The Major, also laughing, put his head round the door. By this time he had realized that the “girl” was Padraig.

“Brendan, what d'you think? Doesn't he make a gorgeous girl?”

“We're all frightfully jealous of him.”

Smiling (though still a tiny bit dismayed by the pleasure he had derived from touching “her” soft body a moment earlier), the Major agreed that black velvet suited Padraig to perfection. It was some time before the mortified Padraig could be enticed out of the adjoining dressing-room. Indeed, it took a great deal of cajolery from the girls and a hearty appeal from the Major before he would agree to show himself again. And then what laughter there was when Charity lifted the hem of his skirt to show the Major what slender, well-turned ankles he had! And his hair was so fine and curled so naturally that if he grew it a bit longer he wouldn't have to wear a wig at all! Besides, according to some magazine they'd been reading there were girls in London who had cut off all their hair and wore it short like men.

“So with his lovely soft hair...”

“And his skin and colouring...”

“And his dark eyes with their long lashes...”

“And my ankles, don't forget them,” added Padraig.

“And his ankles, of course, we mustn't forget them, and his
hands
, just look how slender and white they are!”

“With all those things there's hardly any difference between him and a girl
at all
!” cried Viola enthusiastically.

There was a moment of silence after this remark, perhaps for reflection that there were, after all, one or two small but essential differences (although a well-brought-up girl like Viola might not be expected to know much about them). However, the general good humour was such that in no time at all everyone was bubbling over with laughter and compliments once more and Faith was showing the blushing but gratified Padraig how a girl should walk: this walking was more like gliding, the twins explained (and they ought to know, they'd been to enough different schools with enough deportment classes). They made him walk to and fro with a book balanced on the top of his head until he could move without it falling off. Padraig took to this with a splendid natural aptitude and soon they could safely balance a glass of water on top of the book without him spilling a drop.

Presently someone decided that Padraig should be taken on a tour of the hotel to see if any of the ladies recognized him. He should go on the Major's arm! What a brain-wave! But the Major turned out to be a spoil-sport and refused point-blank.

“Oh, oh,
why
?” pleaded the girls.

“Because.”

“Because
what
?”

“Just because.”

And there was no shifting him. Usually the twins could get round him without difficulty, just by telling him that they thought him handsome and interesting, that he looked like Alcock, say, or Brown. But this time, for some reason, he remained adamant. Well, never mind. They would take him on a tour themselves!

The Major, like the spoil-sport he was, tried to dissuade them, but he did not make his case very eloquently. He kept pointing out that although a joke was a joke, enough was enough, and that sort of thing. Padraig, he suggested hopefully, should put his clothes back on and then everyone should think of another, different, game.

“But he's got his clothes
on
!” screamed the girls indignantly. The Major was
too
boring!

“Yes, I've got them
on
,” agreed Padraig.

Were there any actual
reasons
, the girls wanted to know, enunciating carefully, as if to an idiot, why Padraig shouldn't be taken on a tour of the hotel? Well, yes, there were reasons, but they were so nebulous that the Major found it difficult to specify them. They were certainly not tangible enough to satisfy the girls.

So the tour got under way, Viola leading the way with long button-booted strides, displaying her pearly teeth like the principal boy in a pantomime. Padraig followed with a twin on each arm, chuckling or whispering into one ear or the other while he himself looked as radiant as Joan of Arc and prepared to respond to anything the situation might present.

And as it turned out, Padraig had an enormous suc-cess with the old ladies, which caused the Major to reflect that the twins were probably right: he was a stick-in-the-mud, a spoil-sport and a kill-joy. What a fuss they made of him! They patted his shoulder and kissed his brow and made minute adjustments to his wig, which was the only part of him that “rather spoiled the effect,” they thought (it was a cheap theatrical wig stolen by Faith from some school dramatic society). They delved into their handbags and gave him chocolates to nibble that had that rather peculiar musty taste of perfume and moth-balls that old ladies' chocolates always have. It was wonderful, they thought, how he seemed to know what to do just by instinct, keeping his knees together and sitting up straight and so forth. They were so delighted with him, in fact, that they were loath to let him continue his tour and made him promise to come back. He agreed, of course, and came back quite soon.

The rest of his tour had turned out to be something of an anticlimax. With his retinue he had marched into the ballroom and wheeled several times round Edward's makeshift laboratory. But Edward was engrossed in assembling some extraordinary piece of machinery with pipes and tubes and an old clockwork barometer with graph-drum and inking-needle and pieces of rubber, evidently for some experiment he wanted to make. Consequently he paid no attention whatsoever. The maidservants, of course, smiled at him and showed their dimples, but they were too shy to speak to him, so that was no good. Curiously enough, Mr Norton showed no interest at all; he merely glanced up from his newspaper and raised his wicked old eyebrows. One had to assume that after his life of debauchery he must know the difference between Padraig and the real thing, so this poor reaction dampened their enthusiasm a trifle. Back to the old ladies, then, to have their confidence restored. All in all, and taking, as one must, the rough with the smooth, they had reason to be satisfied.

By now, unfortunately, it was time for Padraig to go home for his supper and so he had to get changed back into his other clothes. But he would come again on the following day; there were still lots of different dresses for him to try on—all Angela's clothes, in fact, which the twins still stoutly declined to wear. Viola had to go home too and said she'd escort Padraig back to his house. With all the excitement and amusement they had been having, with all the good cheer, one tended to forget that these days the roads could be dangerous.

Soon it was time for dinner at the Majestic and the hotel guests began to assemble in the dining-room. It was cold there. A stiff east wind was blowing off the sea and, filtering in through the cracks between the French windows, caused the heavy curtains to move back and forth like impatient spectators in the shadows. In the branched silver candlesticks the flames constantly sputtered from yellow to blue under the compulsion of draughts; the light they provided was supplemented by an oil lamp on each table. One could see one's breath against the surrounding darkness; the tureen of soup on the table belched steam like a locomotive.

The ladies waited, pinched and shivering in layers of shawls and stoles, fingers buried in muffs, crowding all together around the moaning fireplace in which huge, unevenly cut sods of turf blazed without warmth. Now and again a back-draught of pungent whitish smoke would drive the ladies back with averted faces, but somehow this puff of smoke ascending into the darkness, and the smell of turf-ash, made the room seem fractionally warmer. The fireplace groaned mournfully and everyone waited for Edward to come.

It was his habit to appear punctually at seven o'clock. Except when he happened to be away for the day the Major had never known him to miss attending the evening meal. This punctuality of Edward's was the very spine of the hotel: in a sense, it held the whole place together. Slates might sail off the roof in a high wind, the gas mantles might stop functioning on the landings, but Edward's appearance at dinner was immutable. Was there something wrong? An accident? At ten past seven one of the maids appeared with a note asking the Major if he wouldn't mind taking charge. Edward was busy. The ladies exchanged significant glances. It was one thing (said these glances) to be in the trenches with one's commanding officer, quite another thing to be there when one knew that he was toasting himself in front of a warm fire behind the lines somewhere.

While Angela was still alive the Spencers had eaten at a table separated by the width of the dining-room from the guests, but now, drawn together by death, growing chaos, and the advancing winter, everyone ate together at two long tables, Edward normally at the head of one, the Major at the head of the other. According to the ritual the Major now picked up the heavy handbell and rang it vigorously, before crossing to the small door concealed in the oak panelling. He held it open and waited for Mrs Rappaport to step out. She did so, followed by the marmalade “kitten” (now a powerfully built cat). Having taken hold of his arm, she allowed herself to be led to the table. In silence the Major helped her into her chair at the end of the table nearest to the fire, tied a napkin round her neck and put a silver spoon in her hand. A stool had been placed beside her chair for the cat, which had recently become too big and cumbersome to remain on her lap while she was eating. Disasters had occurred; hot soup had dribbled on to its striped back; once while it was sleeping peacefully a portion of scalding shepherd's pie had slid off a fork and dropped like a poultice into one of its ears.)

The Major said grace and took his seat at the other end of the table.

“Where's Daddy?” whispered Faith.

Beneath his thick growth of moustache the Major's mouth shaped the words: “Busy. Eat up.”

“Busy doing what?”

The Major frowned but offered no reply. It hardly mattered what Edward was doing. The important thing was that he had broken one of his own rules.

“Cheer up, Brendan,” said Charity and reached under the table to pat his knee. The Major frowned more sternly than ever and, lifting a spoonful of tepid grey soup to his lips, drank it down with a slight shudder, like medicine. “He's broken one of his own rules,” he thought again, not without a certain bleak satisfaction. “He's beginning to go to pieces.”

Next day Edward was by turns impatient, irascible and resigned. His experiments were being baulked at every turn. The trouble seemed to be that Murphy, whom he wanted to perform his experiments upon, was being difficult.

“The man has no apprehension of the needs of scientific inquiry,” he said. The Major noticed that look of mild self-mockery, which had so surprised him at their first meeting, pass fleetingly over Edward's leonine features. But then his face hardened and he added petulantly: “Pretty soon the bloody servants will be giving
us
orders.”

“What exactly is this contraption?”

On Edward's table lay the partly dismantled graph-drum from the barometer. The inking-nibs had been rearranged to connect with a tangle of wires and rubber pipes; one of these pipes was attached to a glass funnel containing water and a wooden float, terminating in a deflated rubber balloon.