The Empire Trilogy (44 page)

By this time the Major's smile had become a painful grimace. One person after another; he greeted whoever stepped in front of him in the same mechanical way. Even if Kaiser Bill had suddenly shook him by the hand he would probably just have smiled and murmured: “Jolly glad you were able to come.” But now, abruptly, face to face with the stout and venerable Lady Devereux (a second cousin of the Viceroy), he startled her with a brilliant smile and exuberant greet-ing. He had just realized what that dreadful miaowing was that had been so disturbing him: it was merely the orchestra tuning up in the distant ballroom. Tuned to perfection, or as near as one could ask, they had at last gathered themselves together and were playing a lively waltz, the strains of which wafted pleasantly into the foyer. Hearing this sound, a number of the guests, who had been met by hired flunkeys carrying trays of champagne but had lingered chatting more sombrely than one would have expected, brightened up a shade, as if with the thought that something they had been dreading might not, after all, turn out quite as badly as they had expected. There was a perceptible movement then, a venturing inwards away from this friendly antechamber to the mild spring night.

But the Major was still repeatedly having his hand shaken. “There are some really splendid people here already. Perhaps it won't turn out so badly after all.” And then he mused: “Why are people from abroad always so much more distinguished than people from Ireland?” His eyes fell on the distinguished figure of Mr Robert Cumming, a visitor from North Carolina, chatting with Mr Russell McCormmach and the beautiful Miss Bond from Scotland. “How courteous and enlightened they are! (They make the Irish look like oxen.) How naturally they wear their evening dress! What will become of all these splendid people?” he wondered, gazing rapt at Miss Bond's lovely face, her clear eyes and delightful smile, at the gay and charming Mrs Margaret Dobbs who had just come in at that moment, at the young faces that swirled by. “What happens to such people? They never get old, that much is certain. They vanish suddenly one day. They change by magic into something different, utterly different. So that one moment there is a lovely girl and the next some other creature, as different from her as a frog is from the tadpole it used to be. What will become of us all?” he mused (including himself because, after all, he knew himself to be quite handsome too). And this unanswered question left him in a mood of melancholy which he rather enjoyed—because, of course, it was a problem he did not have to face immediately. (One day we shall vanish. But for the moment how lovely we are!)

Ripon and his wife arrived and while Edward greeted them, as stiffly as if they were people he scarcely knew, the Major concluded that his optimism regarding the success of Edward's ball had perhaps been premature. The young people were marvellous, of course, but there were
so few of them
! And young people, the Major knew by experience, were absolutely vital to the success of a ball.

At this moment, however, a large number of handsome young men arrived. The older guests who were still stand-ing in the foyer turned to look at these newcomers and once again they brightened a little. The presence of youth, the Major reflected, very often raises the spirits (however grudgingly) of older people. His own spirits were not raised, however, even though his right hand was grateful for the opportunity of taking a rest. A curt nod was enough greeting for these young men. Two dozen of so of the ex-officers among the Auxiliaries had been invited by Edward, for the chronic shortage of young men in Europe was also felt here in Ireland (whose ruling classes, at any rate, had not waited for the conscription that never came). The result was this: one had to make do with the young men who had survived, whatever their quality.

“You look lovely, my dear.”

Charity was plucking at his sleeve. She and Faith were both dressed in splendid hooped white crinolines; too old-fashioned even to have been culled from Angela's wardrobe, they had been discovered, with cries of bliss, packed away in a forgotten trunk, abandoned by some guest from another era. All their dressing-up of Padraig had given the twins an idea of the dramatic possibilities of clothes; instead of sulking at the prospect of being unfashionable they had set to work with needle and thread—with the result that if their faces had been sufficiently grave and doleful they might well have passed for the elegant inbred daughters of a mad Spanish king.

“It's Granny. She's being frightfully obstinate. She simply refuses to give in.”

“I don't know what I can do.”

“Please come and try. You
must,
Brendan! It'll be too shaming. Everyone will laugh themselves silly...”

The Major agreed reluctantly; he wanted to be on hand to greet Sarah when she arrived. After a quick look outside to make sure that she was not on the threshold he followed Charity upstairs to the suite of rooms occupied by Mrs Rappaport on the first floor. The old lady was sitting bolt upright in front of her dressing-table, a flustered maid at her side.

“Well, Mrs Rappaport, what's all this I hear about you being in danger? I never heard such a story in all my life! I can assure you that nobody means to hurt a hair on your head.”

The old lady was wearing a long gown of black velvet, a dress (the Major had heard) which had formed part of her trousseau but which she deemed herself never sufficiently to have worn; the cloth had been quite unsuitable to the climate in India, yet by the time she and her husband had returned to the more temperate climate of the British Isles her youth had fled, taking with it most of the social occasions at which it might have been suitable. Curiously, though unaltered, it still fitted her to perfection (unlike poor Edward's suit). This could only be a tribute to her relentless habit of sitting up straight and eschewing all forms of self-indulgence. It was strange to think that the proportions of her body were unchanged inside all that black velvet, the proportions, presumably (it could hardly have been her dowry), which old General Rappaport had once found irresistible.

The maid, Faith and Charity were all looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to work a miracle. He dropped his eyes from the glinting diamond pendant the old lady wore around her withered neck and with a sigh fixed them on the worn leather holster she had strapped around her velvet waist. Pulling up a chair, he sat down opposite her, repeating in a reassuring tone that there was really no danger, none at all. Moreover, even if there had been any danger, a whole platoon of young policemen were among the guests. Let a Shinner so much as sneeze out of place and hey presto! he would find himself handcuffed to the nearest grand piano in a brace of shakes.

“Oh do talk
sense,
Brendan,” pleaded Faith, close to tears. “She hasn't the vaguest idea what you're talking about. Can't you be firm with her? The ball is going to be over before we've even found anyone to dance with...”

“Look here, I'm doing my best,” replied the Major, offended. “Besides, if you will interrupt me...Why don't you both go downstairs and send Miss Archer up here. She'll know what to do, I expect. Or Mrs Roche if you can't find Miss Archer.”

The twins required no second bidding. They squeezed their crinolines through the doorway and raced ballooning down the stairs three at a time. The Major turned back to Mrs Rappaport. Few new notions succeeded in getting through to her these days, but when one did it tended to preoccupy her. All the more unlucky, therefore, that when someone had happened to mention the “troubles” to her a day or two earlier, her mind had been sent back to heaven only knew what lonely Indian station out in the middle of nowhere with a vociferous, gesticulating, hopelessly untrustworthy rabble of natives at the gates; the women had had to be armed, taught how to use a revolver and reminded to save the last shot for themselves. Now, sixty years later, on the one night in years that it mattered, the old lady had remembered her elementary weapon training, found her departed husband's revolver and, thin lips quivering, buckled it on.

As the Major reasoned with her gently, and drew his chair closer with the intention of disarming her when the time was ripe, the hideous marmalade cat leaped nimbly out of the hat-box in which it had been sleeping, stretched luxuriously, and bunched itself to jump into the old lady's lap. There it settled, obscuring the buckle which the Major had been hoping to undo. It fixed the Major with a bitter, hostile gaze. The situation seemed hopeless. But at that moment there was a knock on the door and Miss Archer came in, followed by Mrs Roche, both looking serene and capable.

“She mustn't be allowed to go downstairs wearing it or the twins will die of mortification,” the Major explained, and then hurried away, leaving the matter in their hands.

Since Edward's moment of inspiration as he roamed the building by candlelight a month or so earlier a great deal of work had been done at the Majestic. It was on a new carpet with new rods that the Major's patent-leather dancing shoes were now treading as he made his way downstairs, thick and blood-red (which was a good thing since the farther down the stairs they had gone the more copiously had the sack of cats oozed its morbid liquid). True, this carpet came to an abrupt end on reaching the first landing and gave way to the old threadbare and faded one—but in theory it might have come to an end just round the first bend of the banister, the last point that could be glimpsed from any part of the foyer unless one stood on a chair. It was a tribute to Edward's generous nature that no such parsimonious thought had occurred to him. Besides, although guests do sometimes climb stairs uninvited, out of curiosity, they really had no business going up there at all.

The Major paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs and surveyed the foyer, which, though now empty, was brilliantly lit, first by the crude blaze of the torch which had been lifted out of its iron bracket by the stairs, soaked and set ablaze as a fiery welcome to the guests; then by the great ninety-six-branched chandelier which had earlier been converted to electricity and now, with the failure of the “Do More” generator, had been converted back again—candles had been softened and stuck where necessary on to the lifeless prongs of the empty bulb-sockets. Oil lamps with windows of coloured glass had been hung elsewhere and in the vast open hearth a log fire was burning.

All this blaze of light was picked up and reflected by the waxed and polished tiles on the floor (firmly cemented so that they no longer clinked underfoot); it glinted on the golden cheeks of cherubs, freshly dusted and holding mirrors (which were, however, still peeling behind their polished glass). The great sofas that slumbered round the walls had been dragged out on to the steps one morning and pummelled with carpet-beaters, which raised such a thick grey fog as to mask the sun to a pale amber disc, until at last no more dust would rise. But now they glowed a dark cherry red beneath the gilt oak leaves and tassels, and one could sit down without sneezing. The surface of the reception desk lay like a pool of dark water; had anyone leaned over to sign the register he would have seen his own distinguished features looking up at him as if from an ancient, much-varnished portrait.

The Major's eye moved back with a hint of anxiety to the dancing flame of the torch at the foot of the stairs. He was not accustomed to seeing a flame allowed to blaze unprotected in the middle of a room—but it was, after all, safe enough, firmly bracketed over tiles with nothing but the spiralling emptiness of the stairwell above. At his elbow, close to the torch, the gracefully inclined face of Venus had taken on a sly vitality with the dancing of light and shadow. What trouble she had caused, the Major mused, before they had been able to restore her to the softly glowing purity of white marble; that descent of dust which, year by year, had grown like black hair on her head and neck, on her shoulders and sloping breasts, had also found its way into the crevices of scanty marble cloth that failed to clothe her. Quite impossible to get at it with a feather duster! But he and Edward, fanatical and perfectionist, had decided she must be as white as snow; nothing less would suit them. So Seán Murphy had been summoned and the three of them, with starting eyes and bulging veins, had lifted her off her pedestal and staggered out of the door, around the house, down through the kitchens and into the laundry where the maids were waiting for her with scrubbing-brushes and a steaming soapy bath. They had set to work, blushing and tittering and teasing Seán Murphy as if what they were doing was somehow indecent. Then, rinsed and dried and wrapped in clean towels, they had taken her back and set her up once more.

All their spring-cleaning had been fun! The Major was smiling at the recollection. But as his eye wandered over the gleaming black and white chessboard of tiles his smile faded —for sitting on a white tile in the very middle of the floor was a plump grey rat. Almost immediately, startled by the Major's movement, it crept away under one of the sofas and vanished from sight. Frowning, the Major made his way towards the ballroom. This was something they had not envisaged when they had gone upstairs to make their grim harvest of cats. Those cats hadn't been eating the air! A steady grey stream of nourishment had been coming up into the house: rats from the cellars and the pond, mice from the fields and the barn. A cat, however wild and savage, can always be passed off as a pet. Not so with rats. Fortunately there was still a sizeable residue of appetites in the upper storeys. Perhaps the rats would remain out of sight until the guests had gone home.

The orchestra was playing a foxtrot. As the Major made his way towards the ballroom, the lively melody of “Dreamland Lover” grew louder, blending with laughter and the chatter of voices, the rhythmic movement of the dancers on the parquet floor which was shining like a pool of ice. What a fine time everyone must be having! Once again he allowed himself a touch of optimism about the success of the evening.

In the doorway he hesitated. He had seen Sarah and, although his mind continued to register calmly a variety of impressions which had nothing whatever to do with her, he was aware of a solid pulse throbbing in his neck and chest. Tonight he would propose!