Troubles (New York Review Books Classics) by J.G. Farrell

Author:J.G. Farrell [Farrell, J.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590174180
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2010-06-30T22:00:00+00:00

The twins had not been liberated. There was no sign of them in the writing-room, where a fire was blazing in the hearth and where card-tables covered in green baize had been set up, each with a neat stack of playing-cards, a scoring pad and a sharpened pencil.

“I say, you don’t really feel like playing whist, do you?” asked the Major, his eyes closed to the merest slits in an attempt to avoid surrendering to another volley of sneezes. He hoped that she felt as reluctant as he did.

“But of course! That’s what I came for. What a frightful smell of cats there is in this room.”

The Major could smell nothing because of his cold, but he had already noticed that one or two cats, presumably ejected by the servants who had put up the card-tables, were pressing discontented faces against the closed windows.

“Something will have to be done about the cats. Miss Staveley found a litter of kittens in her knitting-basket the other day. And at night they have the most fearful battles up and down the corridors. One can hardly get any sleep.”

Hitherto whist had been informal, merely a way of crossing some of the great expanses of time that stretched like deserts over the afternoon and evening at the Majestic, deserts through which the lonely caravan of old ladies (together with Mr Norton and, on occasions, the Major or Edward) was obliged to make its way. But this time everything was different. Not only had real card-tables been set up and the cats expelled but the ladies, forewarned that this was to be a social occasion, had dressed up in their most splendid clothes and most luxuriantly feathered hats. A glorious riot of coloured plumage waved beside extravagant creations inspired by the garden and executed in silk, satin, leghorn and organdie. And of all the magnificent hats that greeted the Major’s weeping eyes none was finer, as was only to be expected, than the golden pheasant, perfect in every detail, which was riding Miss Staveley’s thin white curls.

“We must cheer ourselves up some way or another,” Edward told him. “Keep up morale and so forth.”

The Major went up to his room to get some dry handkerchiefs and lingered there morosely for a while. When he came downstairs again he found that Mrs Rice, Miss Porteous and Mr Norton were all impatiently waiting for him to join their table. The cards had been dealt. The other tables were already playing.

Sarah was at a table with Miss Staveley, Edward and the Reverend Mr Daly. As for the Major, he was expected to partner Mrs Rice throughout the afternoon. He already knew from past experience that her grasp of the principles of the game was anything but firm. He mastered with difficulty a great explosion of rage as she led with her trumps on the first hand, but he knew that the real reason for his irritation was the deprivation of Sarah’s company, for which, feverish and vulnerable, he felt an acute longing.

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