Gentlemen Formerly Dressed (20 page)

“Oh, how lovely,” Edna gasped as they drove beneath the small covered bridge which spanned the road. “Why is it called the Bridge of Sighs, Mr. Murcott?”

“I'm not sure, dear lady,” Murcott replied. “I presume it's something to do with lovesick students…” He gazed at her and smiled. “I must say I feel rather like sighing myself.”

Rowland grimaced and Edna laughed.

Bloomington Manor
stood at the centre of a large estate southwest of the university city. The manor was an early Victorian jewel of extraordinary proportions. Vast and white with multiple rows of Palladian windows overlooking lush manicured lawns and Italianate gardens tended by a small army of groundsmen.

The house servants stood in a formal receiving line at the foot of the entrance stairs. A young woman stood at the top. From a distance she cut a striking figure in a slim-fitting skirt and bolero jacket. Her hat, set at an angle, was a vibrant red.

Ivy Murcott was small, pale and bird-like in her features and movements. To Rowland she seemed to flutter and dart, directing servants to attend to luggage and others to make tea. She flushed deeply as Rowland shook her hand. “It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Sinclair. It seems like just yesterday when we last spoke.”

“Likewise, Miss Murcott,” Rowland replied though he could still not recall ever being introduced to the sister of Murcott, or Lesley as he was then. He found it puzzling—a little unsettling. Rarely did he forget a face, and Ivy had the kind of face he was likely to remember. It was not beautiful by any means, but interesting. There was a kind of anxious mystery to the girl, a quiet, sharp
observance. Her nose was narrow, her eyes small and dark, but her lips were generous and voluptuous, a surprise on her otherwise unremarkable face.

The Murcotts took their guests on a tour of
Bloomington Manor
and its immediate grounds. There were two separate stables on the property. One housed Murcott's beloved motor cars, of which he seemed to own six. The other, more conventionally, kept horses—excellent animals which were apparently Ivy's great passion.

“I have never yet been able to reach a kill before Ivy,” Murcott boasted for his sister. “I venture there is no man or woman in England who could best her in the hunt!”

“Archie, stop,” Ivy pleaded. “It's not me,” she said, stroking the nose of a black Arabian gelding. “It's Duke. You were born for the hunt, weren't you, darling?”

Rowland reached out to pat the horse.

“Careful, Sinclair,” Murcott warned. “He's a bad-tempered beast… bitten me twice—nearly took my fingers last week!”

With Ivy present, however, the horse seemed no longer a man-eater and tolerated Rowland's hand without blood being drawn.

They returned to the manor for a luncheon of cold roast pheasant served with piccalilli and spiced quail eggs.

“You must watch out for the buckshot,” Ivy Murcott warned her guests. “Archie shot this one.”

Among the Australians only Rowland did not seem confused.

“I say, that's uncalled for old girl!” Murcott protested.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Archie is a terrible shot… if he actually manages to bring down a bird you can assume there will be buckshot scattered through it.” She removed a fragment of lead shot from between her teeth and placed it on the side of her plate in demonstration of her point.

Murcott sighed. “I'm afraid, unlike Ivy, I can never seem to take the head off cleanly. Make sure you don't chew too vigorously… you're quite likely to break a tooth.”

Conversation became a little subdued as the men chewed tentatively and with great concentration thereafter. Edna decided to abandon the pheasant entirely and stay with the quail eggs and piccalilli. It was not a great deprivation as the pheasant had been preceded by a course of soup and then fish.

Rowland asked Murcott if he knew Lady Pierrepont. “She was a Miss Euphemia Thistlewaite before her marriage, I believe.”

“Good Lord… Euphemia married? Did you hear that Ivy? I can't believe we weren't invited!”

“You know Lady Pierrepont?”

“Well, I thought we did! But clearly we're not good enough for Lady Pierrepont anymore!” Murcott said indignantly. He shook his head sadly. “You know, Sinclair, I have come to realise—since my demotion—that people can be very stuck up!”

“Apparently, the wedding was small and a little rushed,” Milton said soothingly. “I wouldn't feel overly offended.”

“Oh…? Oh!” Murcott gaped in realisation. “I say, that's too bad! Euphemia was such a mouse of a thing. Who would have thought?”

Rowland explained then about Pierrepont's head and the charge he'd been given by the waxworker to return it to the lord's widow. If the Murcotts thought Lady Pierrepont's desire to have a wax replica of her husband odd, they did not mention it. “We believe she's staying in Bletchley somewhere,” Rowland finished.

“That would be with Lady Leon,” Ivy said confidently. “At Bletchley Park. She's Euphemia's godmother.”

Rowland made a mental note of the address and the name of
Lady Leon. “We'll take the long way back to London and drop it off on the way.”

“I will not hear of it!” Murcott declared. “You must take one of my cars. Lord knows you'll probably win a couple from me before the night is out… I say, shall we play cards?”

“Yes, if you'd like,” Rowland replied, still a little unaccustomed to the manner in which Murcott became routinely distracted by tangents of conversation.

“Splendid! Viggers…” Murcott summoned his butler and asked him to prepare the library for cards. He ate quickly, despite the dangers presented by the buckshot, and waited impatiently for his guests to finish, ushering them into the library the moment decorum would allow.

“Your old chum seems rather fond of cards,” Clyde observed quietly.

Rowland nodded. Murcott was clearly eager to play.

The library had been set up for a long game, the card table readied with several decks of cards and poker chips, a traymobile of drinks within reach. Clearly, Murcott took his poker seriously.

The game began affably enough, but soon, despite Rowland's best efforts, the stakes began to rise alarmingly. Clyde and Edna folded out very quickly. Milton played for a while longer until he too became unwilling to wager money that was not his. Ivy told her brother he was being ridiculous and refused to continue.

“Shall we call it a day and take a stroll?” Rowland suggested, realising that Murcott was gambling compulsively now. He had no desire to take so much money from his host.

“Just one more hand,” Murcott pleaded. “I've nearly got you figured out, Sinclair! After all these years I'm sure I finally know how to read you.”

Rowland shrugged. “One more hand then.”

Edna shuffled and dealt for him. Almost immediately Murcott raised the stakes exorbitantly. Rowland did not flinch. He could afford to lose and he doubted he would. Murcott's left eyelid twitched involuntarily whenever his hand was good and it was currently still. The paucity of the Englishman's cards was only confirmed by the faint increase in the pitch of his voice when he bluffed. Rowland dragged his hand through his hair, knowing that Murcott thought the action a tell.

Murcott smiled slightly.

Clyde shook his head and groaned. They were watching a financial bloodbath. He and Milton had played enough with Rowland to know it.

Murcott slammed down his cards triumphantly. Rowland opened his hand almost apologetically.

“Oh, I s-say,” Murcott stuttered. “B-but I thought…”

“It was a lucky hand,” Rowland lied. “What say we go into Oxford? I haven't been back in years.”

“Yes, let's do that,” Ivy said, glaring sternly at her brother, “before Archie loses the house!”

Subdued now, Murcott agreed.

They drove back into Oxford and spent the late afternoon wandering through the narrow cobbled streets of the university town, browsing through bookshops and museums and exclaiming at the magnificence of every building. Edna was fascinated by the gargoyles, mesmerised by the dark individuality of every demonic face and delighted at each discovery of yet another stone guardian.

Rowland took them to Oxford Castle with its rough bleached walls stark against the elaborate architecture which surrounded it. Still, it undeniably belonged, like an echo of Oxford's beginnings.

Curious about Rowland Sinclair's life before he'd met any of them, Edna asked after the college he'd attended. And so they found
themselves strolling about the Mob quad—an extensive, grassed quadrangle around which loomed the gothic structures of Merton College. As it happened both Murcott and Rowland were Mertonians.

“I don't suppose you'd consider that footrace, Sinclair?” Murcott asked, assessing the length and breadth of the quad. “Give me a chance to regain my dignity.”

“No, I wouldn't,” Rowland said flatly. “Believe me, Murcott, tearing around the quadrangle will do nothing for your dignity whether or not you win.”

The Englishman sighed. “Yes, I suppose you're right. What about croquet? I was a dab hand… Oh dear… I suppose you're not really in any condition to play croquet.”

“How about we play chess later this evening,” Rowland offered. He was pretty sure he could convincingly throw a game of chess, and clearly Murcott would not leave him alone until he'd beaten him at something.

“I say, really? That's a perfectly splendid idea! Be warned though, Sinclair, we Englishmen have been defending our monarchs and castles for hundreds of years!”

“I'm willing to chance it.”

Thus mollified, Murcott took more interest in the sightseeing. “I say, Sinclair… we're alumni now. What say we borrow the key to the belltower?”

“Why?” Rowland asked suspiciously. Did Murcott want to race him to the belfry?

“To take in the view, of course! We'll be able to see right across Oxford.”

Rowland nodded, relieved. “Jolly good idea. I've always wondered what you could see from up there.”

“You haven't been up before?” Edna asked, surprised. Rowland had spent four years at Merton College and it seemed to the
sculptress that the multi-spired and crenulated belltower beckoned seductively to all who looked up from the quad.

“Undergraduates are not permitted to have the key under any circumstances,” Rowland explained.

“Why ever not?”

Rowland smiled. “They're considered too emotionally unstable… always falling in love and such. I believe the fear is that they'll leap from the battlements and create a terrible mess in the quadrangle.”

“But once you've graduated…”

“Well, then you have an Oxford degree. It wards off the extremes of passion. So you can safely borrow the key.”

Milton laughed. “Yes, of course. I can see that.”

It took them about an hour to locate the keeper of the key and prove their status as alumni. By then the sun was sinking towards the western horizon. Murcott unlocked the door and they took the stone steps quickly, coming out onto an open viewing gallery.

Edna gasped. The towers and spires of Oxford were cast in violet. From here the university city seemed not quite real, a myth, a Camelot.

Rowland watched Edna as she leaned out as far as she could, drawing in the vista with more than her eyes. Against the golden bloom of dusk she was undiminished, a creature as beautiful as the sunset. His fingers twitched for a pencil, every part of him ached to catch that moment, to commit the glory of it to line and shade.

Clyde stood next to him, observing the frustration in his friend's eyes. He followed Rowland's gaze to Edna stretching out over the crenulated wall. “Now that would make a nice picture.”

“Yes, it would.” Rowland's voice was strained, tired.

Clyde said nothing more, but he was thoughtful.

And so they watched until darkness descended upon the dreaming spires of the learned town.