Oxford Blood (21 page)

'They're brother and sister,' repeated Jemima, who was not. 'I looked across at them at dinner and it was quite clear. They were sitting next to each other because they're engaged; there was some joke about it: apparently it's the old-fashioned thing.'

'Saffron and Tiggie Jones!' exclaimed Cass incredulously. 'Brother and sister!'

'Half-brother and sister, to be accurate. It has to be so. And then of all extraordinary things - almost as if she read my mind, Eugenia Jones leant forward and said to me down the table in that rather gruff voice of hers, disconcerting coming from such a little woman: "It you're really interested in statistics, I believe my blood group is B as well, I believe that of many Greeks is so." And of course that figured too. One of Saffron's parents had to be B.

'So you sat there—'

'I sat there in that incredible dining room - that's where the Holbein is by the way, much smaller than you'd expect but even more powerful -being handed endless food by Binyon. I sat there and I looked along at Eugenia Jones in her red velvet dress, same as she wore at the Chimneysweepers', and I
knew
they were both her children. It changed everything.'

'You mean, it should have changed everything,' replied Cass sombrely. But then he was speaking after the weekend was over.

16

A Tragedy Must Take Place

Up till the night of the dinner party, Jemima had never thought of Saffron as being somebody's child; only as being nobody's child, unless of course he was the lawful child of his parents, something which had now been ruled out. Suddenly he had a mother: that gipsy look, how marked it was in Eugenia! And it was Greek of course, not gipsy. Jemima had been right: Saffron did have something of the Mediterranean about him. Eugenia's classical scholarship had distracted her from the fact that she had actual modern Greek blood.

Not only did he have a mother, he had a half-sister. Did Eugenia Jones know she was gazing in her sad abstracted way at her own son? Jemima, remembering her horror and dismay at Tiggie's impetuous announcement of her engagement, believed that she did know.

Under the circumstances, this reaction and the look of despair which Jemima had surprised on the face of Proffy, to say nothing of the melancholy which possessed Eugenia here at Saffron Ivy, were easy to understand. All that fell into place. Eugenia's evident apathy made Jemima wonder what steps she now proposed to take. Was it possible that she was actually going to allow Tiggie to marry her own half-brother, something which was considered genetically dangerous in the modern world, and even worse in the world of classical tragedy which Eugenia Jones might otherwise be deemed to inhabit. Was classical tragedy the clue? Did she feel there was a dreadful inevitability about these events, that a tragedy must take place
...
?

But then how was Eugenia Jones to stop the match? Only by telling her daughter the truth, and that meant, in effect, telling Saffron the truth.

That also meant telling Lord and Lady St Ives the truth, or rather Lady St Ives, if one accepted Nurse Elsie's story of her ignorance. And there was a further consideration: how was suc
h a secret to be kept? How, for
example, was Cousin Andrew Iverstone to be kept in ignorance of news which left him, and Jack after him, heir to the Marquessate of St Ives with all that implied? It might be that Eugenia Jones, seeing her son in a position of vast wealth and privilege, had hesitated to deprive him of it. In that case she had indeed found herself between Scylla and Charybdis, the mythological rock and the whirlpool dreaded by ancient mariners.

On the one hand she sacrificed her daughter, like a Greek maiden to the Minotaur; on the other hand she dispossessed her son
...
there was doubtless still some further mythological comparison amid the plethora evoked in her mind. It was at this point that Jemima became aware that Binyon, impeccably coated in a tailcoat and striped trousers, was offering her asparagus, with the air of one who had been doing so for some time.

'Our own asparagus,' he said confidentially; for Binyon, as Jemima had observed, seldom missed even the slightest opportunity for conversation with those he served. 'In case you're wondering, Miss Shore.'

'Wondering? Yes, I was.' Jemima helped herself with an automatic smile in the direction of the butler, now in full butlerian fig. But that hardly seemed the right thing to say to Binyon, who accepted her remark with a discreet, a very discreet but still perceptible, air of surprise.

She corrected herself. 'I meant, I was
hoping.'

Binyon passed on to Daphne Iverstone; he now looked, with equal discretion, satisfied.

It struck Jemima that throughout her stay so far Binyon had treated her not only as an honoured guest, but also as an ally - an ally from their shared television world. So that in a subtle way he was both anxious for her behaviour to be correct and gratified when it was.

Then this was forgotten as the full implications of her discovery - or rather her intuitive flash concerning Tiggie and Saffron, flooded over her.

Poor little Tiggie, how wan she was, how woebegone, how unlike the odiously affected but high-spirited creature who had seduced Cy Fredericks, engaged the admiring attention of Cass Brinsley and driven Jemima mad at Oxford. Did she have some inkling that her glorious destiny was about to be snatched from her? Jemima recalled her words at the Mossbankers' house: 'I'm going to be Lady Saffron. And I'm going to be really really rich
...'
She remembered also those other revealing snatches from Saffron about Tiggie: 'We think alike. We want the same kind of life.'

It was as though Saffron, in all the atmosphere of hereditary claims in which he had been brought up, had felt himself claimed by his own family, and mistaking one thing for the other had been impelled to bond Tiggie to him.

Who knew?
The question reverberated in her mind as she gazed across at the Strawberry children opposite with their dark eyes and high cheekbones, so similar to those of Eugenia Jones. Then there came another more startling thought, distracting her sufficiently to take another enormous helping of the home-grown asparagus, so that Daphne Iverstone, did she wish for more, was left lamenting. Jemima was assuming all along that her own intuitive discovery meant the end of the projected marriage. What on earth had led her to that conclusion? For one thing, she had no proof, only surmise; for another, even if proof were advanced - an admission of the truth by Eugenia Jones for example - was she, Jemima Shore, about to play God, an avenging god at that, as Cass had pointed out right at the beginning
a propos
Nurse Elsie's revelations? 'Justice is for Almighty God' - Sister Imelda's words. Jemima had entered the fray out of curiosity, not to right a wrong. She had stayed to investigate - and protect Saffron.

In any case was it really so terrible for half-brother and sister to marry? Stranger things must have happened in the history of the aristocracy, to say nothing of the history of the average country villages. Memories of delving into the history of birth control before her programme
The Pill: For or Against
came back to her: there had been long ages, almost to the present day, when the absence of effective birth control of any sort must have led to such embarrassing problems on more than one occasion.

Jones. Who
was
Jones? Tiggie was older than Saffron, a fact on which the gossip columns had not failed to comment, when printing rumours of the impending engagement. If the mysterious Jones was the father of Tiggie, who then was Saffron's father? She gazed down the table at that great progenitor, Professor Mossbanker. Was
that
possible? Ironically, enough, Proffy s blood group - A, which fitted - now became as interesting to her as the blood group of Lord St Ives had formerly been.

At this moment, the rest of the meal having passed in a kind of daze for Jemima while she accepted food in continuing large quantities as a method of covering the desperate sorting of her thoughts, she was aware of a soft voice at the end of the table trying to engage her attention.

'Miss Shore,' Lady St Ives was saying, leaning down the table. 'Isn't it lovely? Binyon will sing for us after dinner.' Jemima realized that Lady St Ives was actually doing that old-fashioned thing of catching her eye; as a result of which the ladies of Saffron Ivy were expected to abandon the dining room to the gentlemen.

The sight of Lady St Ives' pale drawn cheeks, her thin throat hardly concealed by the rows of pearls, and a green silk evening dress, rather grand, the colour too bright for her complexion, reminded Jemima that the truth, if disclosed, would cause pain to far more people than merely Tiggie and Saffron. It would be a vicious stone to throw into any pool, and pain and astonishment and shock and scandal and fear would spread in rings.

Fear. The word recalled her sharply to the original reason for her visit to Saffron Ivy. Someone was trying to kill Saffron. How and where did the surmise of his true parentage fit into this scheme of things?

With a purpose which she hoped was not too apparent, Jemima sought out Eugenia Jones in the White Drawing Room as the ladies settled themselves down for their period of ritual planned waiting. It was noticeable how the style of the White Drawing Room rendered some costumes so much more appropriate than others. Lady St Ives settling her wide emerald green taffeta skirts and picking up a large bundle of embroidery, possessed an unconscious grace which she had not displayed throughout the day. Fanny Iverstone, in a pale pink dress with a wide white collar which owed a great deal to the current fashions of the Princess of Wales (although their figures were markedly different), suddenly looked elegant; her healthy plainness vanished. But Tiggie, in a white chiffon dress, no petticoat but a trail of sequins laid across it, and a bedraggled feather in her hair, looked like a little ghost. There was no place for her at Saffron Ivy.

'Gommer's dress,' exclaimed Fanny, as though she read Jemima's thoughts. 'I've got it. You're wearing Gommer's court dress, Tiggie.' She sounded quite angry. 'And you've torn it.'

At once Tiggie, in her chiffon, stood and sketched an impertinent little dance in front of Fanny; she did it all without speaking, like some chiffon-draped Squirrel Nutkin in front of a conspicuously irritated Brown Owl. But she was much hampered by her shoes: battered white satin court shoes, several sizes too big. The long white kid gloves, with their pearl buttons, were also too big.

'Doesn't the dress look charming on Antigone?' enquired Lady St Ives to the world at large. 'It belonged to Ivo's mother,' she added into the general silence. 'Darling Gommer. How we all loved her.' Her voice trailed away.

'We used to be allowed to dress up in her clothes as children. On special occasions. If we were very careful.' Fanny still sounded sulky. 'Such a pity if it were ruined now.'

Daphne shot Fanny a look in which the warning was unmistakable. It was the look of the poor relation down the ages. The look meant: don't overstep the mark. It's Tiggie's dress now - or it will be. And one day, who knows, we will depend on her favour to come here. If we come here at all.

The full dislike which both ladies harboured for Tiggie was equally unmistakable.

Jemima was just thinking how ironic it was that Tiggie's dress, deemed by her so inappropriate, had actually turned out to be, as it were, the dress of the house, when Tiggie made her first pronouncement since they had entered the White Drawing Room.

'I think I'll just go and have some sleepy-byes,' said Tiggie. She half danced, half stumbled towards the door, catching her foot in its battered white satin shoe with the pointed toe in the train as she did so. (Gommer St Ives' shoes? Presumably.) There was a tearing sound.

Fanny cast her eyes up to heaven. Daphne Iverstone hummed. Lady St Ives kept her eyes on her embroider)'. Jemima, seeing her opportunity, sat down hastily beside Eugenia Jones, who, as ever where she was concerned, had not sought to intervene or even speak to her daughter.

'She's very like you—' Eugenia Jones creased her lips slightly. 'To look at, I mean,' continued Jemima. 'But then I suppose one always thinks that, if one knows only one parent.'

Eugenia Jones inclined her head.

'Perhaps Tiggie is after all very like her father?'

Eugenia Jones looked at Jemima with her enormous dark hooded eyes, eyes which despite being surrounded with a network of wrinkles, were still beautiful. She wore no make-up whatsoever: the effect was in one sense to make her look haggard beyond her years; but in another way the untouched olive skin, if one ignored the lines, the full mouth and fine firm chin, were ageless and might have belonged to a much younger woman.

'Tiggie's father died before she was born. I was never able to compare the two.'

The words were sufficiently abrupt to encourage Jemima, rather than the reverse. She felt some kind of advantage coming her way. 'How sad.' 'Sad?'

'For you of course. But I actually meant: how sad for Tiggie never to have known her father.'