The Empire Trilogy Part 21

"I'll stay in the rooms that have the fewest cracks in them," said the Major smiling.

"Without servants?"

"Oh well, there's always Murphy."

"Murphy! Besides, just look at the size of the place, it's absurd. You can't live here all by yourself. And you just told me the place is up for sale."

"I'll wait until it's sold, then. But I refuse to be hounded out of the place by a handful of labourers with guns in their hands."

"Well, I shall stay with you, of course," Edward murmured unhappily. "But I must say I think it's most unwise."

"There's absolutely no question of you staying, Edward. You have the twins to think of."

Edward had dropped his sledge-hammer and was sitting on the stone steps facing the shattered statue, watching the jagged, freshly torn edges of metal glimmer in the sunshine. A faint breeze stirred the s.h.a.ggy ma.s.s of grey hair above Edward's grim, defeated face. "Absurd," thought the Major, "that we should go on competing when the thing that we were competing for has long since vanished."

"I agree that it's maybe not wise," the Major said gently. "But my mind is made up. Besides, I'm getting to be too old a dog to learn new tricks. Now let's forget about it and talk about something more pleasant on our last afternoon."

Edward was looking relieved. His eyes wandered away from the statue and came to rest some distance away on the bed of lavender planted by his wife "before she died." What was he thinking about? wondered the Major. Of his dead wife, perhaps...of his eldest daughter, the dead one whom he had loved the most and even now continued to love more than he could ever love Ripon or the twins.

And presently, as if the Major had been able to divine his thoughts, Edward said: "I remember the day we brought Angie home in the snow. She was only a baby. It hardly seems any time at all."

The telephone was ringing in Edward's study. So still was the afternoon and so silent the house that the Major heard it ringing from outside in the park. District Inspector Murdoch was calling from Valebridge.

"Is anything wrong? Did they get on the train all right?"

Well, that was what he was calling about. The train hadn't yet left Valebridge because of some trouble on the line between there and Dublin. It wasn't yet clear what was wrong but it might mean a considerable delay.

"They're all elderly. They mustn't be put under any strain. If there's no chance of them reaching Dublin before night-fall you'd better send them back here and we'll try again tomorrow."

"Very well, Major." There was a pause. "By the way, I'm sending one of my men over to have a look round the Majestic."

"Why?" asked the Major. But Murdoch had hung up the receiver.

"How dead everything is!" thought the Major as he wandered aimlessly through the empty rooms and corridors. Utter silence. He could no longer even hear that strange underwater cracking sound. Strange to think that Edward and a few old ladies could make such a difference to the place.

The parting had been a painful one. Convinced that they would not live to see their dear friend the Major again on this earth, the ladies had allowed themselves to surrender to their emotions. He had been obliged to kiss one faded tear-stained cheek after another, clasped to one frail lavender-scented bosom after another-all this combined with the alarms and distractions usually attendant on old ladies travelling: forgotten purses, mislaid tickets, letters for the Major to post, tips that they had forgotten to administer (but who was there left to tip at the Majestic, unless the Major himself?), addresses and timetables that had to be remembered and consequently were swiftly forgotten, little parcels (containing handkerchiefs on which his name and rank had been elaborately embroidered) for him to open after they had gone, urgent visits to the lavatory that had to be made at the last minute when everyone was ready to leave. The Major endured all this with good humour and insisted on remaining cheerful, chaffing the ladies briskly lest they should incapacitate themselves completely with sobs and be obliged to lie down, missing the train.

But at last the ladies motoring to Dublin in the Daimler with Edward had moved away, followed by the hired char-a-banc taking the rest to the railway station at Valebridge. The Major had found himself standing alone in the drive. Of the ladies nothing remained except a faint odour of smelling-salts on the still air.

Not yet accustomed to the strangely silent and deserted house, he had decided to continue his interrupted stroll through the grounds. On his way he began to come across traces of Edward's activities that he had been too preoccupied to notice before; a small cache of ammunition wrapped in an oilskin package was the first thing he happened to see. All the time that he had been working frantically to close down the Majestic Edward had been outside in the park planning its defence. Now that he was looking for them he began to find oilskin packages of ammunition everywhere. But that was not all. There were foxholes too dug in the potato field and in the meadow beyond, and first-aid boxes lodged in hollow trees in the woods. Every rise in the ground had some cover, in some places metal shields cut from segments of old boilers and equipped with slits to fire from-all facing outwards towards the boundaries of the estate as if, just out of sight over the rise of the next hill, silent armies had been ma.s.sed, waiting to attack a slightly mad old English gentleman who drank too much whiskey and raved about the loss of Ireland. Poor Edward! No wonder he had discoursed with such energy to the t.i.ttering girl guides at the dinner-table about fields of fire, flanking attacks and strategic emplacements! Sitting on the steps the other day for a moment, he must have had a vision of being left alone with the Major to man all these positions against the vast and ruthless armies of the Pope.

Standing at the highest point of the meadow, the Major scanned the bright, peaceful countryside looking for the menace. He thought of a compet.i.tion he had seen in one of the newspapers. There was a photograph of some footballers frozen at a dramatic moment in the game, but with the image of the football itself removed from the picture. Readers were asked to make a cross on the photograph where they thought the ball must be. Somewhere before his eyes in the sleeping countryside there was a threat to his safety. He knew it was there somewhere. But to him it was invisible.

As he was walking back to the house he paused at the edge of the drive to wait for a young man on a bicycle who had just emerged from the trees and was pedalling towards him. He had a rifle slung across his back and was wearing a curious mixture of uniforms: his pedalling legs were clad in darkgreen R.I.C. trousers; the upper part of his body, however, was clothed in khaki service uniform, while on his head was perched a flat civilian cap bearing the crowned-harp badge of the R.I.C. A long white hen's feather was stuck into this cap behind the badge. "A fine expression of the muddled will of the great British people!"

This strangely clad individual had now halted his bicycle by dragging his boots along the ground and, not without suspicion, had spoken out in tones of pure c.o.c.kney, wanting to know if the Major was the Major.

"Yes I am. What can I do for you?"

He had been told to have a look round the Majestic in case there was trouble. The whole countryside knew that the people living in the Majestic had moved away and there might be hooligans coming to loot the place. He patted the b.u.t.t of his rifle, but without confidence, more as if he were superst.i.tiously touching wood.

"By all means have a look round the out-houses. But be careful; a lot of the timber is rotten and you could easily break your neck. Another thing...if you happen to see a mad old man with a wrinkled face, don't shoot him. He's one of the servants. When you've finished come inside and ring the bell on the reception desk. I'll give you a cup of tea."

For an hour the Major tried to read an out-of-date copy of Punch Punch in the gun room, but the silence made him uneasy and he found it hard to concentrate. Once more the telephone rang in Edward's study down the corridor, but it stopped before he had time to reach it. He waited for it to ring again, but it didn't, so he made his way down to the kitchens in order to brew some tea for himself and the young Black and Tan. On his way he smiled: he had caught himself glancing nervously into the open doorways he was pa.s.sing. "Really, I've become an old lady myself, I've spent so much time with them. When all this is over I really must find myself some younger members of the s.e.x!" in the gun room, but the silence made him uneasy and he found it hard to concentrate. Once more the telephone rang in Edward's study down the corridor, but it stopped before he had time to reach it. He waited for it to ring again, but it didn't, so he made his way down to the kitchens in order to brew some tea for himself and the young Black and Tan. On his way he smiled: he had caught himself glancing nervously into the open doorways he was pa.s.sing. "Really, I've become an old lady myself, I've spent so much time with them. When all this is over I really must find myself some younger members of the s.e.x!"

By five o'clock the teapot had grown cold and there was still no sign of the Black and Tan, so the Major went out to look for him. First he wandered through the kitchen garden towards the stables-but they were empty, as were the garages and out-houses. The door of the barn was open, so he peered in. A pleasant scent of summer hay greeted his nostrils. There was no sign of the young man. With misgiving he approached the ladder up to the loft and set his foot on the worm-eaten bottom rung. It took his weight, so he began to climb. When his head and shoulders had emerged through the trap-door he looked around. It was lighter up here. One of the wooden leaves of the loading-gate was open, allowing a shaft of sunlight to fall on the floor.

Someone had been here recently. Dust hung in the air and, where the sun touched it, blazed like a furnace. On each side the towering banks of hay had a grey look, as if cut many years ago and abandoned. But there was no one here now. He cautiously backed down the ladder. "I could look for him here for ever and not find him."

He continued, however, to move through a succession of courtyards, past the well and the pump, towards the apple house, of which the door also stood open. It was here that the superfluity of the Majestic's huge apple crop was stored: windfalls and "cookers" for the most part. At the time of the Major's first visit they had been piled on top of each other, bruised and rotting, to within a few feet of the roof; but in the interim the cook had made her daily visit to fill a coal-scuttle with apples for pies and desserts (and perhaps the old crones in black had also been filling their flour sacks). The result was that a hollow had been scooped out of this ocean of apples, a valley that built up from knee height to shadowy slopes reaching well above the Major's head. There was silence here too, and a pungent smell of rotting fruit. "In a few weeks," the Major was thinking, "this place will be so full of wasps that one won't be able to get near it...But then, in a few weeks will it matter any longer?" And he took a few steps forward into the gloom. As he did so there was a convulsion of the shadows behind him and he pitched forward into the apples. Losing consciousness, he was aware that the apples had begun to roll; a great avalanche of apples thundered down on him and buried him in blackness. But he was not dead yet, so he had to be dragged out by the heels.

The Major was left lying on the ground for a few moments while his wrists were tied behind his back. When he was picked up again a pool of blood was left in the place where he had lain. All the way down the steps from one terrace to the next, past the black and silent swimming-pool with its skeletal diving-board, past the derelict tennis courts and the empty weather-beaten urns that lined the route like grim sentinels, blood continued to splash every few paces. Presently the lowest terrace was reached. Then the Major's limp body was conveyed lower still, on to the rocks, and from there with considerable difficulty was handed down to the beach.

Some distance away was the young Black and Tan whom the Major had been attempting to summon for tea. Bound, gagged and, like the Major, scarcely conscious, he had been buried up to his neck in the sand, ready for the incoming tide. His head was lolling to one side and he did not raise it as the sound of clinking pebbles drew nearer and came to a halt beside him. His eyes were closed, his young face had a peaceful expression, and his breathing was slow and steady.

Beside the Black and Tan a hole was begun for the Major; but before it was more than two feet deep the digging spade rang against rock and this hole had to be abandoned. The spit of sand was narrow, the shape of a blade pointing towards the sea. Since the Black and Tan already occupied the only suitable position another hole was dug a few yards farther back. This time there was no impediment.

When the new hole was deep enough the Major's limp body was lowered into it and the crook of a walking-stick was used to drag his bound ankles back into a kneeling position. A heavy rock was then laid on the back of his calves, packed down with smaller stones and covered with sand. By this time only his head remained visible.

His wound had stopped bleeding now but he was still unconscious. Gradually, as darkness fell, the tide crept up the beach towards him. It was a mild, windless evening and the sea was calm. As it grew darker lonely, heart-rending shrieks were heard from some distance away-but it was only the peac.o.c.ks, whom n.o.body had remembered to feed that day, preparing to roost for the night in the branches of an oak on the highest terrace.

Meanwhile the flooding tide continued its advance. Soon after the moon rose there was a snorting, gasping sound from further down the beach but presently silence and peace closed in once more.

When the whispering fringe of surf was still a few feet short of the Major's head, however, the tide reached its height and in due course began to ebb once more. By this time he was semi-conscious. Questions, impossible to seize and examine, loomed in the shadows. What was he doing buried in the sand? Had he been left to drown? And his mind wandered away, buoyant and aimless as a drifting balloon, to the trenches-to some "show" or other in some G.o.dforsaken wood without a name.

At first light people came to dig him up and he became feebly conscious once more. They dug with care, as if aware of the danger of slashing his bound wrists with the spade. They used their hands to feel out the edges of the heavy rock that lay on his calves and gently lifted it away. Then, in turn, they lifted out the Major and laid him on the sand.

By now he was completely numb. He could feel nothing. But the involuntary movement of his limbs had awoken a terrible cramp, so that it seemed as if his body was doing its best to tear itself to pieces. Each muscle in his stomach, thighs and shoulders had contracted as hard as marble, vying with its opposite number to snap his bones and ligaments. Yet at the same time his mind was quite peaceful. It was as if, after all, this body did not belong to him. As he lay there quietly on the sand, a great feeling of serenity stole over him-the sort of feeling one might have for a few moments after a serious accident when one realizes that one is no longer one's own responsibility. Other people were taking care of him. He could hear their voices faintly from farther down the beach where they were probing the sand with the spade. Presently they began to dig another hole.

The Major was now thinking about Sarah...and about love. And then, without being aware of any transition, he was thinking about Ovid, an author he had read without pleasure at school. Strange to think that some people should actually enjoy reading Ovid as much as, say, that story of T.C. Bridges which had been serialized in the Weekly Irish Times Weekly Irish Times last year. What a charming story! There was one episode which had particularly taken his fancy: the young man confessing to his girl-friend that although in appearance a gentleman he is really a burglar, and that consequently it is inevitable that she must detest him...But the girl (and what a splendid surprise this had been both to the young man of the story and to the Major)...the girl sticks by him, stoutly says she loves him and doesn't believe him capable of stealing. (And true enough, there had been something rather rum about his theft. He had had a b.u.mp on the head or he'd been hypnotized and couldn't actually remember doing it.) Jolly decent of the girl, in any case, to stick by him. Sarah, of course, would undoubtedly do the same in that situation. And with this agreeable thought the Major's weary, salt-caked eyelids crawled down over his eyes and he slept, or became unconscious, it would have been difficult to say which. last year. What a charming story! There was one episode which had particularly taken his fancy: the young man confessing to his girl-friend that although in appearance a gentleman he is really a burglar, and that consequently it is inevitable that she must detest him...But the girl (and what a splendid surprise this had been both to the young man of the story and to the Major)...the girl sticks by him, stoutly says she loves him and doesn't believe him capable of stealing. (And true enough, there had been something rather rum about his theft. He had had a b.u.mp on the head or he'd been hypnotized and couldn't actually remember doing it.) Jolly decent of the girl, in any case, to stick by him. Sarah, of course, would undoubtedly do the same in that situation. And with this agreeable thought the Major's weary, salt-caked eyelids crawled down over his eyes and he slept, or became unconscious, it would have been difficult to say which.

When he next woke up he was again buried up to his neck in sand. The sun had risen and was blazing directly into his eyes, dancing on the surf not far away. This light blinded him, so that for some time he was aware of nothing but the pain of his retina. When he had become more accustomed to it, however, he realized that he was no longer alone. Scarcely more than a yard to the left there was another head poking out of the sand on the same level as his own. He recognized the fellow immediately: it was the young c.o.c.kney who had come up to him on a bicycle the day before...He had invited the chap to tea.

"Why didn't you come to tea?"

But the man made no reply, merely continued to stare round at the Major in an insolent fashion with one cloudy blue eye opened very wide and the other one closed to a glinting slit. From his open mouth a wisp of something dark was trailing: it might have been seaweed. Presently a bluebottle came buzzing round and at last decided to settle on that wide blue eye. But the eye did not blink.

As the sun rose higher the Major's awareness improved and once again he did his best to rally the thoughts that sped here and there like small slippery fish, impossible to grasp. "Death!" he thought. And: "To drown." But this seemed inadequate, so he made a further effort and achieved: "To drown is awful..."; but this, although also inadequate, exhausted him for a while. Soon, however, he was able to scale another flight of steps up to consciousness and said to himself: "My side is deuced painful. Hurts like the devil." Then thoughts of Sarah, Edward and the twins occupied his mind, but they were no help to him. He must think of something else.

The movements of his limbs had in the meantime worked a gap of three or four inches between his body and the sand which moulded it. This gap had filled with water oozing up through the sand. He now noticed that the water had a reddish tinge and knew that he must be bleeding. At the same time as his consciousness improved he was tortured by thirst, and the aching of his limbs became intolerable. Neverthe-less he decided that, however painful it might be, he must move his head to see who else was on the beach beside himself and the insolent young c.o.c.kney. Millimetre by millimetre, a fraction of a degree at a time, he twisted his neck and moved his sluggish eyeb.a.l.l.s, first in one direction, then in the other. On the beach there was not a soul to be seen. It was completely deserted.

The water took on a deeper shade of red. "Soon Sarah will come and dig me out," he thought with a mixture of love and agony as the swimming sunlight crept nearer and nearer. Then, once more, he lost consciousness.

Another three-quarters of an hour elapsed before some rescuers arrived to a.s.sist the buried Major. These rescuers were led, not by Sarah, but by Miss Johnston and Miss Staveley. Miss Bagley, though terrified and out of breath, was not very far behind. Bringing up the rear was poor Mrs Rice, who could not see very well and who had been given the spade to carry. Puffing and exhausted, she kept calling out to the others to wait for her, she was afraid she might fall and break her hip and then...heaven only knew what! Pneumonia, perhaps. When one gets on in years one must be careful.

In due course they set to work. Miss Staveley, who had seized the spade while Mrs Rice had a little rest, began to dig (and not a minute too soon). But she too was very tired (none of them had slept a wink, having returned from Valebridge to find the Major gone) and tiredness made her clumsier than ever, so that she seemed to be shovelling as much sand back into the hole round the Major as she was taking out of it. When at last the water was beginning to surge round her ankles, Miss Johnston, who had taken charge of the operation and was becoming apoplectic with impatience, seized the spade in her turn and, pneumonia or no pneumonia, began to dig with frenzy. But in the end it was only Miss Bagley (feebly a.s.sisted by Mrs Rice)-Miss Bagley whom the Major had never really liked as much as the others-who could muster the strength to lift out the heavy rock which pinned him in his watery grave. The young c.o.c.kney, however, was left for a second immersion.

From a window on the fourth floor of the Majestic a shadowy figure paused to watch the old ladies drag the Major's inert body back from the advancing sea.

"Dead!" Murphy's wrinkled old face convulsed with glee as he wandered on, crooning a song he had learned some fifty years earlier as a young man in Wicklow Town. "Ni sheanfad do ghra-sa na do phairt 'n fhaida mhairfe me..."

And as he shuffled from one silent, deserted room to another he watered the carpets with the liquid from the watering-can he was carrying; he sprinkled everything with it, the flowers on the curtains and the coronets on the faded red carpet in the corridor. He soaked the bedding with it and poured it into empty drawers and cupboards, crooning gently all the time. When he came upon a pair of long-abandoned ladies' shoes in a dusty drawing-room, chuckling, he filled them till they were br.i.m.m.i.n.g. Several times he padded slowly down the creaking stairs to fill his watering-can from the tank in the garage. Then the sound of his wheezing breath would alert the cats to the fact that their friend Murphy was back amongst them once more and they would all come galloping up, postponing whatever they had been doing-their b.l.o.o.d.y territorial battles in the attics or their fierce and appalling carnal endeavours on the battlements.

"p.u.s.s.ies!" Murphy would mutter. "Have a sup now, will ye?"

And he would sprinkle the seething quadrupeds until their fur became slick and oily (and the cats inside the fur became definitely displeased). Lick themselves though they might, there was nothing that would make their fur return to normal; howling with grief they slunk away, sticky and wretched.

"Dead!" said Murphy, standing in a patch of afternoon sunlight. "Sure I'll drink to that..." And gripping the watering-can, he raised it to his blue lips and began to gulp, pausing every now and then to make a smacking sound, it tasted so good.

"Now then, where're me matches?"

Wearily he turned out his pockets. On to the floor he dropped, one after another, a penknife, a raw potato with a bite out of it, two silver teaspoons, a devotional communication from the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, a ball of twine, a lump of tobacco, and a dead thrush. But no matches! Murphy scowled and popped the tobacco into his mouth, chewing morosely until he remembered how he used to make fire without matches as a boy. Once more he descended the creaking stairs, this time to Edward's study where he had seen a magnifying gla.s.s. Then up to the sunlight on the fourth floor where he trained the blazing golden eye on a piece of paper. Just as it was beginning to smoke, however, the sun pa.s.sed behind a cloud. Murphy took another drink and sat down to wait impatiently for it to reappear.

The Major was not yet dead, however, though by now not very far from it. He was about a mile and a half from the Majestic, lying on Dr Ryan's kitchen table. The old ladies would never have had the strength to transport him here by themselves. Fortunately they had come upon Sean Murphy who, although he had gone into hiding, had been unable to resist lurking in the vicinity of his familiar potato diggings. At first he had seemed too frightened of the I.R.A. to help, but a brief conversation had convinced him that he was even more terrified of Miss Johnston. So the limp Major had been trundled up to the house in a wheelbarrow and then put in the Standard. The journey had reopened his wound, however, and now as he lay on the table he was once more bleeding copiously.

While the ladies were trying to staunch the flow of blood with towels the doctor, who was tired and upset by this sudden invasion, wandered away to look for a needle with which to st.i.tch the wound. "Ach, old women! What a fuss they make! Always making a fuss, always talking, gossiping, good for nothing except drinking tea and causing trouble." It annoyed him to think that he had once actively sought the company of these creatures. What a young fool he must have been! he was thinking as he rummaged through the instruments scattered on his desk (now what was it he was looking for?). A young man is better off minding his studies. The musty, faded smell of old women drifted up out of his imagination as he slumped wearily in his armchair beside the empty grate. Women! Ah, his wife had been different of course, yes, but that had been many years ago. Years before the rise of the new Ireland. The new Ireland would get rid of all these old women. They wouldn't be allowed. His wife had smelled of skin, like a young girl, not of lavender water and peppermints. Ah, she was different, he was thinking sleepily; "people are insubstantial. They never last. All this fuss, it's all fuss about nothing. We're here for a while and then we're gone. People are insubstantial. They never last at all." As his ancient wrinkled eyes gently closed, he said to him-self absently: "Now wait, there was something I was going to do..."

In the kitchen the Major's face was as grey as oatmeal and the blood was flowing faster than ever, so that the old ladies were beside themselves with desperation. The sight of the blood all over the place would have been enough to make anyone quail, let alone an old lady who was not used to that sort of thing. But they hung on grimly, determined that the Major should live, come what might. By now they were pale and trembling themselves. Mrs Rice had already fainted, revived, fainted again, and now she was drinking a cup of tea to give her strength and courage. Meanwhile, where was that dratted doctor?

In due course the doctor awoke, refreshed by his nap, and remembered that he had been looking for a needle and that he had to st.i.tch that young fool the Major, who had got himself into a sc.r.a.pe. He had told the silly a.s.s to go while the going was good! He had known that something would happen. Only young fools would get themselves into trouble for nothing. And really, he thought, more disgruntled than ever, it was all for nothing! What purpose did anything serve? It all ended in the graveyard. He ought to know. He'd been to enough funerals in his time. And he tottered peevishly back to the kitchen, muttering: "People are insubstantial. They never last, they never last..."

"Of course they don't!" snapped Miss Johnston. "If you treat them all like this!"

"Old women!" snorted the doctor petulantly, looking more senile than ever. But the hands with which he set to work were surprisingly deft and steady for such an old man.

Presently the Major, st.i.tched, bandaged, and given some beef tea, had been tucked into bed and his body had at long last been allowed to start on the business of repairing itself. The four ladies had all locked themselves into one of the upstairs bedrooms for fear of being molested by that dreadful old man. The doctor, for similar reasons, had locked himself into his study, and soon everyone was fast asleep. By this time the sun had set and it had grown quite dark. But about an hour later, while down on the beach the young c.o.c.kney was being immersed for the third time, yet another sunset lit up the sky, for Murphy had at last realized that the cloud behind which the sun had disappeared was, in fact, a hill to the west. And so he had resorted to matches instead, having come upon a box in an old silk dressing-gown of Edward's.

By the time the inhabitants of Kilnalough had noticed the glow in the sky and motored, ridden or walked out to the hotel, the Majestic was an inferno. Streams of fire the size of oak trees blossomed out of the windows of the upper storeys. Caterpillars of flame wriggled their way down the worn and threadbare carpets and sucked at the banisters and panelling until all the public rooms were ablaze. The heat grew so intense that the spectators were driven back with flushed faces, first to the edge of the gravel, then farther and farther back over the gra.s.s, which the heat quickly shrivelled to raffia-until at last they were standing right back among the trees, gazing with shaded eyes at the blinding magnificence of the burning Majestic. By now only the attics under the roof were recognizable, their windows still black and empty.

It was from these black windows that flaming, shrieking creatures suddenly began to leap-hundreds of them, seething out of the windows on to the gutters and leaping out into the darkness. Those not already ablaze exploded in mid-air or ignited like flares as they hurtled through the great heat towards the earth. Someone in the crowd remarked that it was like watching the fiery demons pouring out of the mouth and nose of a dying Protestant. But that was not all, for now a hideous, cadaverous figure was framed for an instant, poised on the roof, his clothes a cloak of fire, his hair ablaze: Satan himself! Then he vanished and was never seen again in Kilnalough. But he was thought to have swooped down to eat a meal of children in the infernal regions.

For a few minutes more the Majestic became brighter and brighter until, like a miniature sun, it was impossible to look at for more than a moment with the naked eye. Then with a shuddering roar it caved in upon itself and an immense ladder of sparks climbed into the sky.

And that was the end of the Majestic. It continued to burn and smoke, however, for two more days and nights. n.o.body considered burying the charred and scorched demons that littered the surrounding land. Soon they began to smell atrocious.

In July Dr Ryan received a visit from Mrs O'Neill and her daughter Viola. He had been asleep on the couch in his study and was displeased at having been woken. For some time it was not clear whether the visit was a social one or whether his professional services were required. a.s.suming the former, since both mother and daughter looked to be in good health, he showed them into his front room, a damp and depressing place which rarely encouraged visitors to prolong their stay more than was absolutely necessary. Having done this, he sank into a chair and closed his eyes. Mrs O'Neill chatted away sociably about this and that, while Viola smiled prettily, showing her dimples, occasionally directing a meaning glance at her mother ("Is he asleep?").

At last, after a long silence which the doctor had found agreeable but which his guests had found disturbing, Mrs O'Neill said: "Viola would like you to recommend a diet for her, Doctor. She finds she's getting rather plump and needs to lose a bit of weight."

With an effort the doctor got to his feet and shuffled off down the corridor to his study followed by Mrs O'Neill and Viola, both of whom wrinkled their noses when they saw the state the place was in. But still, one had to make allowances. He was elderly, and the only doctor in Kilnalough.

When Viola had partially undressed, the doctor looked briefly at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and at her stomach and then motioned her to get dressed again.

"Well, Doctor?"

"She doesn't need a diet."

"But she's getting fat, Doctor!"

There was another long silence. The old man stood there wool-gathering, eyes half closed. Mrs O'Neill and Viola exchanged a significant glance. "Impossible," Mrs O'Neill was thinking, "impossible for him to keep his mind on anything for more than two seconds!"

"A diet, Doctor," she reminded him. But the doctor merely sighed and it looked as if they were not ever going to get any sense out of him. At last, however, his trembling, wrinkled lips parted and he said: "Your daughter doesn't need a diet because she's pregnant, Mrs O'Neill."

"Pregnant! But that's impossible. Viola is only a child. She doesn't even know know any young men, do you, Viola?" any young men, do you, Viola?"

"No, Mummy."

"There, you see...It's absurd. And what a thing to say! Really, it's disgusting!"

"None the less, Mrs O'Neill, she's pregnant."

"But how many times do I have to tell you...?" And again Mrs O'Neill patiently explained (nothing was achieved by losing one's temper) that what Viola wanted was a diet, nothing more complicated than that. But the old doctor persisted in being obstinate and senile. Gradually it became clear to Mrs O'Neill that it did no good to explain anything to him, however patiently. The old boy was beyond it. His mind was made up and there was no hope of making him see reason. Dr Ryan, who had served Kilnalough so well for so many years (and this was true, he had had done a splendid job, one must give him his due), had at last reached the end of his career in medicine. In some ways it was rather sad. But it was no use complaining. done a splendid job, one must give him his due), had at last reached the end of his career in medicine. In some ways it was rather sad. But it was no use complaining.

Dr Ryan shuffled as far as the gate with his visitors and watched them walk away towards the main street. Then with a sigh he made his slow and laborious way round the house to the back garden, where the Major was sitting in a deck-chair reading a newspaper.

On his last day in Kilnalough the Major paid a melancholy visit to the charred rubble which was now all that remained of the Majestic. He did not linger there, however, because he had a train to catch. Besides, there was very little to see except that great collection of wash-basins and lavatory bowls which had crashed from one burning floor to another until they reached the ground. He inspected the drips of molten gla.s.s which had collected like candle-grease beneath the windows. He noted the large number of delicate little skeletons (the charred and roasted demons had been picked clean by the rats). He stepped from one blackened compartment to another trying to orientate himself and saying: "I'm standing in the residents' lounge, in the corridor, in the writing-room." Now that these rooms were open to the mild Irish sky they all seemed much smaller-in fact, quite insignificant. As he was carefully stepping over a large pile of wood-ash (which he suspected must have once been the ma.s.sive front door) he looked back and happened to notice something white, half concealed by rubble. It was the statue of Venus, strangely undamaged. It was much too heavy for him to lift by himself, but when he got back to Kilnalough he made arrangements for it to be packed and shipped to London.

As it turned out, this lady of white marble was the only bride the Major succeeded in bringing back with him from Ireland in that year of 1921. But he was still troubled by thoughts of Sarah. His love for her perched inside him, motionless, like a sick bird. For many weeks he continued to think about her painfully. And then one day, without warning, the bird left its perch inside him and flew away into the outer darkness and he was at peace. Yet even many years later he would sometimes think of her. And once or twice he thought he glimpsed her in the street.

THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR.

Introduction.

In 1857, the eighth Earl of Elgin was on his way to punish the Manchu rulers of China for daring to close the city of Canton to British opium traders when he heard about the Indian Mutiny. The anti-British insurrections were confined to North India, especially the Gangetic Plain, from where most of the mutinous sepoys, or Indian soldiers, of the British East India Company had been recruited. But they threatened to undo all that the British had gained in India in the previous hundred years. Elgin immediately diverted his punitive expedition to India and spent a few anxious weeks in Calcutta, waiting for news of British victories, before moving on to deal with the Chinese.

Elgin was a reluctant imperialist. "I hate the whole thing so much that I cannot trust myself to write about it," he wrote in his diary as British warships under his command bombarded and killed two hundred civilians in Canton. In Calcutta, living in a mansion modeled on Kedleston Hall in England, he wrote of the three or four hundred servants that surrounded him: One moves among them with perfect indifference, treating them not as dogs, because in that case one would whistle to them and pat them, but as machines with which one can have no communion or sympathy. When the pa.s.sions of fear and hatred are grafted on this indifference, the result is frightful; an absolute callousness as to the sufferings of the objects of those pa.s.sions....

As a police officer in Burma, forced to shoot an elephant he didn't particularly want to shoot, George Orwell felt acutely the degradations colonialism imposed as much on the oppressor as on the oppressed. Trapped into roles and actions not of his choosing, even the reluctant imperialist, Orwell thought, "becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.... He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it."

But the outraged feelings of a few individuals do not disturb much the impersonal business of modern empires. A range of influential men in Britain-Edmund Burke as well as John Stuart Mill-spoke up for the Indian victims of the East India Company. But they had little impact on the real rulers of India, whom Burke denounced as "young men (boys almost)" who rule "without sympathy with the natives," the "birds of prey" who make their fortune before either "Nature [or] reason have any opportunity to exert themselves for remedy of the excesses of their premature power."

In the decades before the mutiny, these officials of the East India Company had radically disrupted India's old social and economic order. They had forced skilled artisans and craftsmen to become petty commodity producers while turning India from an exporter of high-quality luxury items into a supplier of raw materials for the Industrial Revolution in England. Their extortionate demands for agricultural revenue had forced an older cla.s.s of landholders and peasants into debt and dest.i.tution.

Confronted with Belgian rapacity and destructiveness in the Congo, the narrator of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness claims that claims that the conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea-something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to....

The East India Company chose to redeem its presence in India with the idea that it was the carrier of a higher civilization, bringing the fruits of science, rationality, and progress to lesser peoples. But this evangelical spirit of reform, which sought to undermine Indian social and religious customs, only succeeded in further alienating many Indians, particularly those living in the Gangetic Plain. Even a traveler as unsympathetic to Indians as Richard F. Burton, the translator of the Kamasutra Kamasutra, could see in 1856 how arrogant the British had become in India and how hated they were by many Indians. The mutiny, when it erupted, shocked the British, particularly "Cawnpore" (Kanpur), as it was remembered by the British for decades afterwards, where Indian peasant soldiers treacherously ma.s.sacred more than four hundred British men, women, and children after promising them a safe pa.s.sage down the river to the city of Allahabad.

The British had managed to dominate India primarily through the threat of violence-in 1857 there were 34,000 European soldiers to 257,000 Indians in the British army. The widespread rebellion made them fear, as the first British historian of the mutiny, John Kaye, put it, "those whom we had taught to fear us"; and predictably, the British first sought to restore the balance of terror.