The Empire Trilogy Part 13

"Of course. You're perfectly right. All the same, the Major here is an army man and I'm sure he'll want to come with me." Bolton was smiling contemptuously once more. Without turning towards her the Major was aware of Sarah's eyes on his face.

"Certainly," he said. "I'm ready to go whenever you like."

The wind that had been blowing since early morning continued without slackening throughout the afternoon, a solid rushing of air that kept the branches of the trees pinned back and combed the gra.s.s flat on the hill-slope where the Major was standing. The wind sifted through Captain Bolton's short fair hair and ballooned the jacket of his tunic as he sat on a shooting-stick, peering through binoculars. His wind-swollen shoulders gave him the appearance of a hunchback. After a moment he dropped the binoculars, removed the leather thong from round his neck and, without a word, handed them to the Major. The Major raised them to his eyes and looked down the slope towards the sea.

"Funny thing," Bolton mused. "I never cared much for the Irish even before all this. An uncouth lot. More like animals than human beings...used to make me sick sometimes, just watching them eat."

The Major had by now focused the binoculars on the seminary, which stood beside a rocky promontory. The crowd had a.s.sembled in a meadow in front of the grey stone campanile, whose bell, moved by the wind, struck an irregular, querulous chime, scarcely audible at this distance.

"I hope they all get rheumatism from kneeling in the wet gra.s.s."

"They're standing up again now. A young man is making a speech by the look of it."

"Let's have a look." Bolton took the gla.s.ses, looked through them briefly and handed them back.

Even though earlier in the afternoon he had seen the roads packed with people and carriages, the Major was astonished by the size of the crowd. With the foreshortening of perspective the heads seemed to be piled one on top of another. A number of women stood on the fringes of the crowd and three or four carts in which invalids lay propped on mattresses had been dragged over the rough ground to the front of the seminary so that they could hear the speaker. At the upper windows of the seminary building white-faced boys craned to hear, grasping the heavy iron bars for support, while on the steps a group of black-skirted priests stood and stared and cupped their ears into the rushing gale of air. The young man now stood way out by himself on a jetty of rock that ran some distance into the sea.

He had a strong jaw above a thick, muscled neck in which the Major imagined he could see veins starting out, bulging furiously as the mouth opened and closed to articulate his soundless words of rage. He stood on a level a little below that of the listening crowd and the wind from the sea blew his matted hair forward over his face.

"Are we going down there?"

"You can go if you like, but I prefer not to get a bullet in the spine if I can help it." Bolton stared mockingly at the Major and then went on: "I get fed up, you understand, with all the heroes in the Golf Club. You must excuse me for not being able to resist calling their bluff from time to time."

"I see."

"Sarah Devlin was telling me the other day what a fine man Edward Spencer is. A man of courage and principles who would never be capable of a cowardly or unworthy act-a real gentleman, in fact. She compared him favourably with me, a ruthless and unprincipled fellow whose men hara.s.s innocent people, burn their houses and destroy their property as the whim takes them."

"What she says is true, isn't it?"

Bolton smiled and picked up a dry twig, snapping it thoughtfully into small pieces between his fingers. "I do whatever the situation requires, Major. What I tried to explain to Sarah was that people like you and Edward can only afford to have fine feelings because you have someone like me to do your dirty work for you. I become a little upset when people who rely on me to stop them being murdered in their beds start giving themselves superior moral airs."

"As a matter of fact I think you're wrong about Edward. If anything he supports reprisals."

"Perhaps, but without dirtying his own hands with them. That makes all the difference."

The Major raised the binoculars and gazed once more at the young man on the rock jetty, wondering what he was saying to the crowd. Behind him as he spoke great towering breakers would build up; a solid wall of water as big as a house would mount over his gesticulating arms, would hang there above him for an instant as if about to engulf him, then crash around him in a torrent of foam.

"He looks a wild young fellow," the Major said as he handed the binoculars back. Before turning away he watched another huge wave tower over the young Irishman, hang for a moment, and at last topple to boil impotently around his feet. It was, after all, only the lack of perspective that made it seem as if he would be swept away.

By the following morning the wind had dropped and mild autumnal sunshine bathed the old brick and woodwork of the Majestic.

With the milder weather the Major's nest of pillows in the linen room became hotter than ever, almost equatorial in fact. It was impossible to open the window, which had swollen with the rain and been painted shut many years ago. The heat mounted. After a couple of hours of tortured reflection on his relationship with Sarah, his naked body glistening like a savage's, he would be obliged to gulp down several pints of cold water. It was true that later, when the meal had been cooked and the stoves banked down for the night, the heat would drop to a more pleasant temperature-but by that time he had worn out his emotions, written two or three feverish letters with sweaty hiatuses on the paper where the ink refused to stay. In some of these letters, forgetting that he could not permit himself to be weak, he capitulated completely ("Sarah, I love you, you must come back to me, ah, the heat is intolerable"). But fortunately he mastered himself sufficiently never to post them, thinking: "She'd only think me a bit of an a.s.s."

"I shall never see you again," he groaned aloud one afternoon, sitting high up on one of the blanket racks with a gla.s.s of whiskey and swinging his damp hairy legs in the air. But at that moment there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?"

"Me. Can I come in?" came Charity's voice.

"Certainly not." The Major hastily jumped down and began to pull on his clothes. "What d'you want?"

"That girl wants to see you."

"Which girl?"

"The one you all make such a fuss of. The one with the spots and the limp."

"You mean Sarah? Tell her I'll be down immediately."

But Charity was still mooning outside the door when he opened it, and gave him a surly, reproachful look.

"How did you know where I was?"

"I saw you go in one day. What d'you do in there anyway?"

Although some days had pa.s.sed since they had seen each other, Sarah seemed to be treating her visit as entirely normal. She greeted him as if unaware of the heartache that this separation had caused him. She was cheerful. She was delighted to see him. By herself she had been miserable. Why had he not come to see her?

"Eh?"

"I've been most horribly sick (ugh! It's disgusting to mention such things). You might at least have come and cheered me up."

"Was it an unmentionable disease?" asked the Major gaily, infected by her good spirits.

"All diseases are unmentionable, Brendan, but I shall tell you anyway. I spent a whole night vomiting. Isn't that re-volting?"

The Major laughed, although secretly somewhat taken aback by this frankness. Of course Sarah was a law unto herself.

But she was irresistible. She chattered away gaily to him as they strolled arm-in-arm back and forth over the dusty floor of the ballroom. Yes, she had talked to Captain Bolton... What a strange, cold man he was! Those blue eyes of his! They said in Kilnalough that once he had glanced for a moment at a gla.s.s of water on Father O'Byrne's table and ice had formed on it an inch thick...Oh, the Major was impossible! Of course it wasn't true literally literally, it was true in some other way, how should she know in what way it was true? And, and... the miracle, had he seen the miracle after that absurd little scene at the Golf Club? Well, she'd taken a peek at the statue and there didn't seem to be much blood flowing anywhere but there were a couple of brown spots...but they they might have been anything, they might have been, say, oxtail soup. Oh well, if it was blasphemy to say so then so much the better, she'd have a sin to confess for once, which would make a nice change, her life was so dull...she could never think of any sins to might have been anything, they might have been, say, oxtail soup. Oh well, if it was blasphemy to say so then so much the better, she'd have a sin to confess for once, which would make a nice change, her life was so dull...she could never think of any sins to commit commit, let alone confess, particularly when she felt sick and vomited all the time, it left her feeling much too weak to do any sinning...and anyway, since he, the Major, was a "beastly Prod," she didn't see why he should mind her saying something blasphemous, in fact he should positively encourage her, but never mind about that, what was it she wanted to say, yes, she wanted to know everything, absolutely everything that had been going on while she had been sick...

"You mean, going on here?"

"Of course I mean here. Where d'you think I mean?"

But the Major could think of nothing but the fact that he had spent three whole days hollow-eyed with love for her.

By now they were strolling in the residents' lounge, shielded from the curiosity of the whist players by a bank of potted shrubs which had been evacuated from the Palm Court by Edward.

"Take a look at this." Grasping a heavy plush sofa that stood in the middle of the room beside a table of warped walnut, he dragged it aside. Beneath, the wooden blocks of parquet flooring bulged ominously upward like a giant abscess. Something was trying to force its way up through the floor.

"Good heavens! What is it?"

The Major knelt and removed three or four of the blocks to reveal a white, hairy wrist.

"It's a root. G.o.d only knows where it comes from: probably from the Palm Court-one of those wretched tropical things. There's a two-foot gap between this floor and the brick ceiling in the cellars, packed with earth and gravel and wringing wet from some burst drain or waste-pipe."

"Why d'you think it wants to come up into the lounge?"

"Looking for nourishment, I suppose. There may be lots more of them for all I know. One shudders to think what it may be doing to the foundations."

"Poor Edward! Come on. Let's see if we can find any more suspicious bulges."

They set off immediately, walking from one room to the next, along corridors, upstairs and downstairs. In no time this looking for bulges became a marvellous game. They spotted bulges on the walls and floor and even on the ceiling. "Bulge!" Sarah would cry gaily and point at some offending surface. And then the Major would have to get down on his hands and knees or place his cheek against a cold wall and squint along it in order to adjudicate. Although a number of these bulges proved imaginary, once one started looking for them at the Majestic there was no shortage of genuine ones. Did some of these bulges conceal thrusting roots sent out by one or other of the ambitious plants in the Palm Court? Probably not. However, without digging up tiles and making holes in plaster it was impossible to be sure. Even so it was great fun. Sarah was in the most delightful, effervescent mood and in between bulges she chattered away with all sorts of charming nonsense. What would she do without her gallant Major? How brave he must be to have won all those medals in the war (what medals? he wondered, perplexed)! And had he ever in his life seen a more delicately shaped ankle than hers (leaning a hand on his shoulder and lifting the hem of her skirt to show him not only her ankle but her knee as well)? It came from having been a miserable cripple in a wheelchair all her life, which had stopped her getting ugly muscles like a dairy-maid. And she was lost, she said, in admiration of the Major's moustache, which made her think of a privet hedge she had seen in Phoenix Park. What a fine couple they made! she exclaimed as their twin reflections floated over a grimy mirror. What a fine couple! The Major laughed and laughed, as happy as a schoolboy. The afternoon pa.s.sed delightfully. medals? he wondered, perplexed)! And had he ever in his life seen a more delicately shaped ankle than hers (leaning a hand on his shoulder and lifting the hem of her skirt to show him not only her ankle but her knee as well)? It came from having been a miserable cripple in a wheelchair all her life, which had stopped her getting ugly muscles like a dairy-maid. And she was lost, she said, in admiration of the Major's moustache, which made her think of a privet hedge she had seen in Phoenix Park. What a fine couple they made! she exclaimed as their twin reflections floated over a grimy mirror. What a fine couple! The Major laughed and laughed, as happy as a schoolboy. The afternoon pa.s.sed delightfully.

Tired out at last, they sank down on one of the red plush sofas in the foyer and chuckled about the grey veil of dust that rose as usual, and about the clock over the reception desk which only told the right time, by accident, once every twelve hours. It was tranquil here, and oddly private, as public rooms often seem when deserted. By the foot of the stairs the statue of Venus glimmered in the subdued light.

Still chuckling, Sarah leaned over and kissed the Major, partly on his moustache then, more seriously and from a better position, on the lips. The Major melted, but cautiously, remembering the remark she had once made about his moustache tasting of garlic. They continued to kiss for a minute or two. Then Sarah sat up abruptly, disengaging herself. The Major straightened up also, to see what was the matter. She was looking over his shoulder with an expression of shock. He turned to see what it was.

Edward was standing a few feet away watching them. He had evidently come down one of the corridors, his footfall m.u.f.fled by the carpet-but no, the floor was surely tiled, there was no carpet, they should have heard him coming; perhaps, even, Sarah had chosen this very place because one could hear people coming. Edward continued to stand there for the briefest of moments, his face expressionless. Then he turned and vanished, his shoes ringing clearly on the tiles.

Sarah hurriedly got to her feet. As the Major made to do the same she pushed him back and said sharply: "No, wait here for me. I'll be back in a moment." With that she hurried after Edward. The Major was left alone.

The foyer had become very silent. The Major got up and went over to peer down the corridor. It was deserted. He listened, holding his breath. Very faintly he heard, or imagined he could hear, the sound of Sarah's voice. Then a door closed. He stood there for a moment or two, then went to sit down again. The minutes pa.s.sed. Sarah did not come back. "Really, that's a bit thick."

He had been there for half an hour by now. The foyer was silent and peaceful. Nothing stirred. n.o.body came or went. For a while he played hopefully with the thought that Sarah might have forgotten that she had said she would come back, that she was waiting anxiously for him in some other part of the building. But no, he had to abandon it. It did not hold water. So that was that.

He chose the corridor that led away from Edward's study and as he mechanically followed it he experienced a sharp craving for something sweet. There was a bar of chocolate in his pocket. He gobbled it rapidly. But the acid continued to eat into his soul.

In this unbearably sensitive state he took an unfamiliar route-through a grimy bar that no one ever visited, through a door like a cupboard that contained a flight of wooden uncarpeted steps. It was as if he had been skinned alive; the thought of contact with anyone was more than he could endure. The slightest ba.n.a.l word would produce a scream of agony.

The staircase took him up into a round, many-windowed turret, the floor of bare wooden boards, empty of everything except a carved lion and unicorn, worm-eaten and hanging from a nail. A strong smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air and somehow seemed to belong to the silence.

Another door led into a covered catwalk spanning thirty feet of empty air to another, identical turret. Below lay the dank, sunless remains of a rock-garden. The Major ventured circ.u.mspectly on to the catwalk, testing the wooden planks with his foot before putting any weight on them. There were no windows. Slatted trays of apples banked up from floor to ceiling allowed him barely enough room to squeeze through. The smell of apples was overpowering. He picked one up and, sniffing its wrinkled, greasy skin, somehow found this autumnal smell soothing. The turret at the end of the pa.s.sage was as empty as its sibling. Steps led down from it on to an open veranda on which a man was standing, elbows on the iron rail, smoking a cigarette. It was the tutor.

"h.e.l.lo."

The tutor turned towards him and nodded without surprise. He was wearing roughly darned plus-fours and a tweed jacket with pleated, bulging pockets which reached almost to his knees. Since the education of the twins had lapsed once more the Major could not remember having set eyes on him. He was seldom to be seen about the hotel. He ate his meals in some other part of the building, perhaps with the servants. Presumably he was still responsible for cooking the stew of sheeps' heads for the dogs. If he had other duties the Major did not know of them. In all probability he had been forgotten in this remote part of the house and lived his own life, waiting for better days.

"They come here every evening at this time," the tutor said.

The Major had joined him on the veranda and having had a look round now knew where he was. Below was a paved courtyard full of rubbish and dead leaves, although there was no tree in sight. Just round the corner would be the back door to the kitchens. Beyond that, on the other side of a wall, the dogs would be lounging, bored as the ladies of a harem, waiting for someone to come and give them some exercise. Immediately below the veranda yawned four giant, malodorous dustbins. A number of old women dressed in black were rummaging in these bins with fingers as gnarled as hens' feet, head and shoulders swathed in black shawls that concealed their faces.

"They're looking for food. They come up from the beach every evening when it begins to get dark-they can get in easily that way provided there isn't a high tide. I told Mr Spencer about it but he hasn't done anything."

The Major stared down at the moving black figures, smelling the aromatic scent of the tutor's cigarette. A shrill, incoherent argument had broken out between two of the women over a greasy newspaper containing sc.r.a.ps and bones. Watching them, the Major thought with despair: "She doesn't love me at all. She doesn't love me at all."

Below, the argument was at last settled. One of the women withdrew and, squatting on the ground, opened the newspaper to pore over its contents, counting them over and carefully examining the fragments of meat. When she had finished she stowed them in an empty flour bag before returning to the huge bins.

"If you ask me, the cook sometimes throws away perfectly good food on purpose. They can get away with murder if no one keeps an eye on them."

The Major nodded. His whole life would be spent without Sarah. Although it was now almost dark the black crones, oblivious of the Major's anguish hanging like a bitter fruit a few feet above them, continued to pick deftly through the rubbish.

THE PREMIER AND IRELANDMr Lloyd George, speaking at the Guildhall banquet in London last night, referred to the situation in Ireland. He said: "Before I sit down, if you permit me, I must touch on one of the few disturbed corners of the Empire. I am sure you will not guess what I am referring to (laughter)-Ireland (laughter). I hope soon it will be less disturbed. There we witness the spectacle of organized a.s.sa.s.sination of the most cowardly character (Hear, hear), firing on men who are unsuspecting, firing from men who are dressed in the garb of peaceable citizens and are treated as such by the officers of the law, firing from behind-cowardly murder (Hear, hear)."Unless I am mistaken by the steps we have taken, we have murder by the throat (Hear, hear). I ask you not to pay too much heed to the distorted accounts by partisans, who give detailed descriptions of the horror of what they call reprisals but slur over the horrors of murder (Applause). I ask the British public-I am sure it is not necessary to ask them-I apologize for asking them-not to be ready to credit the slanders on the brave men (Hear, hear) who at the peril of their lives are tracking murder in the dark (Hear, hear)."I am told that the result of the steps we are tak-ing is that you have had more murders than ever in the last few weeks. Why? Before this action was taken in vast tracts of Ireland police were practically interned in their own barracks. They dare not go out. Terror was triumphant. We had to reorganize the police. But as long as men are in dug-outs the casualties are not as great as when they go out to face danger. And the police are going out seeking danger in order to stamp it out (Hear, hear). And believe me they are doing it. They are getting the right men. They are dispersing the terrorists."If it is necessary to have further powers we shall seek them (Hear, hear), for civilization cannot permit a defiance of this kind of the elementary rules of its existence (Hear, hear). These men who indulge in these murders say it is war. If it is war, they, at any rate, cannot complain if we apply some of the rules of war (Loud cheers). In war if men come in civilian clothes behind your lines armed with murderous weapons, intending to use them whenever they can do so with impunity, they are summarily dealt with (Hear, hear). Men who carry explosive bullets are summarily dealt with in war. If it is war, the rules of war must apply. But until this conspiracy is suppressed there is no hope of real peace or conciliation in Ireland and everyone desires peace and conciliation-on fair terms-fair to Ireland, yes, but fair to Britain (Hear, hear). We are offering Ireland not subjection but equality. We are offering Ireland not servitude, but a partnership. An honourable partnership, a partnership in that Empire at the height of its power, a partnership in that Empire in the greatest day of its glory." (Loud and prolonged cheering.) * * *

The Major should have left for Italy now, but he did not, of course. A letter arrived for him from Cook's answering a variety of questions about trains, hotels and steamers which he could no longer remember having asked. He dutifully read it through twice, but five minutes later he was unable to recall a single word. By this time it was almost the end of November. Icy draughts played around the rooms and corridors of the Majestic and sent their freezing breath up the legs of his trousers as he sat in the lounge.

After some deliberation he wrote Sarah a letter asking if they could meet some time to talk things over-but she did not reply. Presently, he wrote her another letter saying that whatever her virtues, constancy was not one of them (not that she had ever claimed that it was). The only conclusion he could come to, he concluded, was that she was simply a plain, old-fashioned flirt, which was fine, of course, if that was what she wanted to be. A little later he wrote yet another letter disclaiming the one before, which, he regretted to say, had been written in a spirit of bitterness. Neither of these subsequent letters achieved a reply, however, and he thought: "All I've managed to do is to have an argument with myself in these letters. She'll think me quite mad." And he forbade himself to write any more. At the very end of November, while getting dressed one morning, he became extremely depressed and one by one the b.u.t.tons dropped off his shirt, like leaves off a dying plant.

This was also a bad time for Rover, who was gradually being supplanted as the favourite among the harem of dogs. By degrees he was going blind; his eyes had turned to milky blue and he sometimes collided with the furniture. The smells he emitted while sitting at the feet of the whist-players became steadily more redolent of putrefaction. Like the Major, Rover had always enjoyed trotting from one room to another, prowling the corridors on this floor or that. But now, whenever he ventured up the stairs to nose around the upper storeys, as likely as not he would be set upon by an implacable horde of cats and chased up and down the corridors to the brink of exhaustion. More than once the Major found him, wheezing and spent, tumbling in terror down a flight of stairs from some shadowy menace on the landing above. Soon he got into the habit of growling whenever he saw a shadow... then, as the shadows gathered with his progressively failing sight, he would rouse himself and bark fearfully even in the broadest of daylight, gripped by remorseless nightmares. Day by day, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, the cat-filled darkness continued to creep a little closer.

To share his place another dog had been summoned from the yard, a spindle-legged Afghan hound with pretty golden curls. Little by little this animal usurped the affection dedicated to Rover. True, he had some bad habits. If one managed, in spite of the draughts, to doze off in an armchair after lunch, there was a good chance of being promptly awoken by a warm wet tongue licking one's cheek-but some of the ladies did not seem to mind this. Besides, compared with Rover he smelled like a rose.

As December arrived, a curious thing happened at the Majestic: in a steady trickle more guests began to appear. There had always been the odd one or two coming or going; someone would be stranded in Kilnalough and obliged to stay the night before going on to Dublin in the morning. But now the number of old ladies (and there were even one or two old gentlemen), was increasing noticeably. It was a little while before it dawned on the Major that what they were com-ing for was...Christmas! He could not help thinking that far from enjoying a merry Christmas they would be lucky if the place did not fall on their heads. Of course they probably had some idea what to expect. They had heard, perhaps, that the place was not what it used to be; but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break. So many people, now elderly, had banked their few warm and glorious memories of childhood at the Majestic that, even though they knew it was not quite the same, they somehow found it hard to stay away.

At first the Major would sometimes be on hand when they arrived (neither Edward nor Murphy nor any of the servants would be) to cushion the shock. But soon he realized that it was easier to stay away like everyone else. The new arrivals would sort themselves out somehow or other. In the meantime it was less embarra.s.sing to keep out of their way. Still, the Major would give them a friendly thought as they stood in the shabby magnificence of the foyer beside their mountain of suitcases, probably in silence waiting for someone to come, listening, perhaps, to the heavy tick-tock of the clock over the reception desk (which the Major had wound as a token of welcome) and wondering, could that really be the time? (which of course it couldn't) or glancing with misgiving at the numbered rack of heavy room-keys which, ominously, seemed to be nearly all there-the only thing about the hotel that was was all there, they might decide later, including Edward and the staff. all there, they might decide later, including Edward and the staff.

They would stand there looking round at the dusty gilt cherubs and red plush sofas and grimy chandelier and statue of Venus. While they waited uneasily for someone to come (for Murphy would have melted into the deepest jungle of the Palm Court at the sight of the carriage laden with heavy suitcases coming up the drive) they would taste the bittersweet knowledge that nothing is invulnerable to growth, change and decay, not even one's most fiercely guarded memories.

The Major's relationship with Edward had further disimproved, no doubt as a result of the kiss in the foyer he had witnessed. Not only was the Major jealous of Edward, but Edward seemed to be jealous of him him, a fact which for a little while helped the Major to extract a little comfort from Edward's coldness. One day he received an unpleasant surprise, however, when Edward abruptly said: "Oh, by the way, Sarah's gone away for a couple of weeks or so."

"Oh, has she?"

"She told me to tell you. And to thank you for your letters."

The Major nodded calmly and turned away, but he was bleeding internally. He had been betrayed again.

Whatever satisfaction Edward might have got from tormenting the Major, he appeared anything but cheerful himself. He reacted, moreover, to the increasing number of guests by making himself scarcer than ever. Although his appearance for breakfast, and dinner in the evening, remained inflexible, he was now seldom seen for the rest of the day. On one occasion he murmured to the Major (perhaps he was momentarily ashamed of himself for s.a.d.i.s.tically revealing the fact that Sarah had confided in him about the Major's letters), as a sort of oblique explanation of everything, that he was devoting himself to his biological studies. The Major had already noticed the parcels of books and equipment that had started to arrive from Dublin. Once or twice he came upon Edward in a remote bedroom surrounded by books and papers. On another occasion he stumbled upon Edward's makeshift laboratory, set up in the bathroom adjoining the bridal suite on the first floor. Afraid lest Edward should think he was snooping, the Major backed out again quickly-but he had had time to glimpse a microscope on the table beside the bath of peeling gilt and black marble in which, no doubt, many a bride of the last century had washed away her illusions of love. Beside the microscope there was a litter of gla.s.s slides, a Bunsen burner, some jars containing a greenish fluid, a few sticks of rotting celery and a dead mouse. It was not clear whether the mouse had merely happened, by accident, to expire there or whether it formed a part of Edward's experiments.

The Major was concerned, not only because Edward had become moody and hostile and peculiar again, but also for more practical reasons. After all, it was not his his job to run the hotel. But it badly needed to be run by somebody. If there was an increase in the number of guests arriving (which was bad enough, since n.o.body seemed to want them) there were also one or two defections among the regulars, which meant that life at the Majestic was really getting beyond a joke. The Major ventured to suggest to Edward that if any more of the regulars left they might well start a stampede which would leave the place denuded after Christmas. job to run the hotel. But it badly needed to be run by somebody. If there was an increase in the number of guests arriving (which was bad enough, since n.o.body seemed to want them) there were also one or two defections among the regulars, which meant that life at the Majestic was really getting beyond a joke. The Major ventured to suggest to Edward that if any more of the regulars left they might well start a stampede which would leave the place denuded after Christmas.

"I say, do you really think so?" Edward asked, brightening for a moment. But then: "Some of them have nowhere to go, of course." He became despondent once more and turned back to the tome he was reading.

"Oh well, if you actually want want them to go..." the Major replied crossly. them to go..." the Major replied crossly.

The thing that most worried the Major was that the Majestic was literally beginning to fall to pieces. Edward was making no effort to keep it in repair. The Major supposed that the way he looked at the situation (if he looked at it at all) was logical enough. After all, the hotel had over three hundred rooms. Even if half the building fell down he would still be left with a hundred and fifty-which was more than enough to house himself and the twins and the servants and anyone else who survived the strangulation of the hotel's trade. Meanwhile, no matter how much they might grumble, the residents adapted themselves remarkably well to the nomadic existence of moving from room to room whenever plumbing or furniture happened to fail them.

True, the amenities had gone from bad to worse (not that the Major really noticed any more). The foliage evacuated from the Palm Court now looked like taking command of the residents' lounge; the mirrors everywhere had become more fogged and grimy than ever; the gas mantles which had until recently burned on the stairs and in the corridors had now stopped functioning, so that the ladies had to grope their way to bed with their hearts going pit-a-pat; the soup in the dining-room became clearer and colder as the days went by, and as the cook was left more and more to her own devices bacon and cabbage followed by baked apples appeared more frequently on the menu; outside in the grounds a tall pine keeled over and flattened a conservatory with such a terrible crash that two ladies (Miss Devere and a Mrs Archibald Bradley) packed their bags then and there; on the few remaining tennis courts a peculiarly tough and prolific type of clover continued its advance, so that if anyone had been thinking of playing tennis (which n.o.body was) they would have found that even the most firmly hit service would never rise more than six inches. But Edward these days had that far-away look in his eyes and if one of the recent arrivals went to com-plain to him he scarcely seemed to be listening, though he would nod his head rapidly and say from time to time, almost with eagerness: "I say, do you want your money back?" Or puffing at his pipe and looking at his shoes he would murmur: "Really, that is most unfortunate...Let me a.s.sure you that no charge will be made...I mean, none could possibly..." and his voice would trail off.

One unseasonably warm day the giant M of MAJESTIC detached itself from the facade of the building and fell four storeys to demolish a small table at which a very old and very deaf lady, an early arrival for Christmas, had decided to take tea in the mild sunshine that was almost like summer. She had looked away for a moment, she explained to Edward in a very loud voice (almost shouting, in fact), trying to remember where the floral clock had been in the old days. She had maybe closed her eyes for a moment or two. When she had turned back to her tea, it had gone! Smashed to pieces by this strange, seagull-shaped piece of cast iron (she luckily had not recognized it or divined where it had come from). Edward made a feeble effort to penetrate the submarine silence in which the old lady lived, muttering an apology and tugging nervously at his thickly matted grey hair. She wanted an explanation, she said, ignoring his words (which she could not hear anyway) but mollified nevertheless to see that his lips were moving and that his expression showed alarm. For a while she continued grumbling and it gradually emerged that her main grievance was that her tea had been demolished along with the table. It appeared that she had spent a good part of the afternoon shuffling along distant corridors trying to find someone willing to take her order for afternoon tea. In the end she had come upon Murphy taking a nap on a royal-blue ottoman behind a screen of ferns in a remote sitting-room (it was probable that he was the only person to know of its existence until that moment). He had been aroused by a poke in the chest from the heavy blackthorn that the old lady had brought with her to punt her frail body over the vast, dustily shining expanse of the ballroom. Unmanned by this experience, he had gone to make tea for her himself. After getting lost a couple of times on the way back, and stopping for a rest at frequent intervals, she had at last regained the veranda. And now this hard-earned tea had been pulverized by a twisted piece of metal which had apparently fallen from the sky! It wasn't good enough.

Edward ordered fresh tea and, anxiously looking up at the other letters clinging insecurely to the building, suggested that she might like to move her chair along the veranda a little to where there was a better view.

As a result of this incident Edward seemed to abandon whatever ambition he might still have nourished of running the place as a hotel. It marked, at any rate, the end of that period during which guests might consider themselves encouraged to come to the Majestic. He did not lock the gates, however, and a trickle of Christmas guests continued to arrive, unencouraged, to claim hospitality.

The Major, unfortunately, was unable to match Edward's indifference. He worried about everything, about the cats proliferating in the upper storeys, about the lamentable state of the roof (on rainy days the carpets of the top floor squelched underfoot), about the state of the foundations, about the septic tank, about the ivy advancing like a green epidemic over the outside walls (someone told him that far from holding the place together, as he had hoped, it would pull it to pieces with all the more speed). It is true that the Major's nerves were in a poor condition; he sometimes wondered himself if he wasn't being unduly alarmist-the Majestic had held up splendidly in all weathers for many years. Presently, however, a piece of stucco ornamentation the size of a man fell from the coping of the roof into the dogs' yard. A foot or two to the left and it would have squashed Foch, a long-haired dachshund.

Anxious to report this, he went in search of Edward. The laboratory had been evacuated from the bridal suite; Edward had set up his table in the very middle of the ballroom. One needed s.p.a.ce to allow one's thoughts to expand, he explained. In the bathroom he had felt compressed, his ideas had been restricted, had refused to flow freely.

While the Major told him about the near-disaster to the dog Foch, Edward picked up the dead mouse and absent-mindedly began to squeeze its thorax between finger and thumb like a piece of india-rubber.

"Missed him, did it?" he remarked brightly. "Well, that was a stroke of luck."

"Hadn't we better get a mason in to look the place over?"

"That's a capital idea. I expect there's some johnny in Kilnalough who does that sort of thing. I'll get in touch with him."

That night the Major dreamed that he was in a dirigible. The captain and crew had fallen overboard, leaving only Mrs Rice and himself. Later Mrs Rappaport appeared in the uniform of one of the Bavarian line regiments, together with her marmalade cat, now as big as a sheep. Fortunately she took command and, after bombing Dublin, brought them down safely.