Oxford Blood (3 page)

'Your
programme? I thought the priest started it.'

'My programme. The one about peace of mind for the elderly and how they should be allowed to die in peace.'

Cass groaned. 'Oh my God, the ghastly power of television. You mean those few casual words of yours inspired an old nurse who had sat on a secret for twenty years, suddenly to up with it and spout it out to a priest in the confessional'

'I mean just that,' said Jemima unhappily. 'The penultimate programme in the series was called
Peace of Mind.'

'Peace of mind! What about the mother? What about the boy, for heaven's sake? We haven't even mentioned him. What's his name, for a start? We keep calling him the boy - but he's virtually grown up.'

'Saffron is his name, like the house. Lord Saffron, I think, or Viscount Saffron, that's the courtesy title of the heir. Nurse Elsie just refers to him as Saffron.'

'A very grand adoption. From bastard to viscount. And imagine a boy brought up to all of that - yes, I know I'm a member of the Labour Party but I've got humanitarian feelings - imagine such a one being suddenly told he's nobody. He must be quite grown-up.'

Cass Brinsley stood up and checked his watch.

'My God, look at the time. Jemima darling, you are irresistible. All the same, I absolutely must go.' Jemima smiled and rolled gracefully off the bed, abandoning Midnight so that she could throw her towelling arms around Cass.

'Ouch, no fluff. No honey-coloured fluff, if you don't mind. And not too many red-gold hairs either. As I was saying—' Cass picked carefully at his dark sleeve '—you are irresistible. And you are also in a hole, which happens to you but seldom. So what I will do for you is this. I will come down to the Hospice with you on Saturday. Can't possibly manage it till then. I won't take a statement or anything like that - I'm not a solicitor. But I will sort of spread my authority around, persuade that Matron of the foolishness of all this talk, about the law of slander - good point that. See the priest if necessary. It's your peace of mind I'm worried about, by the way, not Nurse Elsie's.'

'Angel - and to hell with the honey-coloured fluff.'

Jemima launched herself and Cass Brinsley ducked, retreating rapidly.

'Let them know we're coming,' he called, 'with any luck Nurse Elsie will be dead by Saturday and the whole problem will be solved.'

As it happened, Cass Brinsley was right as, in his legal way, he was right about so many things.

Nurse Elsie survived through Wednesday and Thursday; according to Sister Imelda - who spoke in a typically unemotional voice on the telephone - the prospect of Jemima's return with 'a legal adviser' had indeed brought about some kind of miracle. Nurse Elsie had rallied.

She was so much recovered that according to Sister Imelda she proposed to receive some visitors on Friday - old friends.

'But she's living for
your
visit,' Sister Imelda gave a dry cough. 'That's what she says, Miss Shore. You do of course realize that Nurse Elsie remains a dying woman, could in fact die at any time. These little rallies, in our experience, seldom last very long. However, we expect you and - Mr Brinsley, is it? - on Saturday as arranged. Goodbye, Miss Shore.'

Mr Brinsley and Miss Shore spent Friday night together at Jemima Shore's flat. It seemed convenient that they should set out for the Hospice together. On Saturday morning however, just as Jemima was pulling on the honey-coloured robe, the telephone rang. It was Sister Imelda.

The news she wanted to impart was that Nurse Elsie Connolly had died peacefully if unexpectedly on the previous afternoon. Peacefully, and only unexpectedly in the sense that Nurse Elsie had had a visitor sitting with her at the time.

'Distressing but hardly surprising: she was dead before Father Thomas could be fetched to give her the last rites.'

'A visitor?' Jemima knotted the robe around her and listened rather confusedly to the sound of her bath running in the next room, the bath in which she had intended to lie planning their whole course of action at the Hospice.

'The Marchioness of St Ives was sitting with Nurse Elsie at the time of her death,' replied Sister Imelda; Jemima wondered if it was pure imagination on her part that she heard an undercurrent of triumph in the Matron's voice.

'It was so very sweet of her to come all the way from Saffron Ivy when she heard that Nurse Elsie was asking for her. But then Lady St Ives is such a remarkable selfless person, as we have found here at the Hospice. And she was the very last one to be with her. Nurse Elsie must have been so pleased by that. Lady St Ives and Nurse Elsie were after all such
very
old friends. Another old friend also came, one of Nurse Elsie's ladies - as she used to call them. But Lady St Ives was the last.'

This time there was no mistaking her tone. Jemima stood by the telephone, still holding the receiver, and wondered if the Matron's normally impassive face was wearing the same expression of cool satisfaction.

'So you see, Miss Shore,' concluded Sister Imelda, 'Nurse Elsie did after all die in peace, just as you wished. You must be glad to know that.'

The Matron rang off. But for some time after the noise of the telephone had been reduced merely to a steady sound not unlike Midnight's raucous purr, Jemima remained standing with the white receiver in her hand.

3

Nothing Wrong with Money

By the end of an agreeable weekend, telephone mostly off the hook, Jemima Shore had come to agree with Cass Brinsley that Nurse Elsie Connolly's death was providential - and natural. Jemima's feeling of uncase when Sister Imelda broke the news on the telephone that Saturday morning, she was now prepared to ascribe to her own over-heated imagination, inspired by the atmosphere of the Hospice. The death was providential because it freed Jemima of further responsibility towards the matter.

'Yes, I know you have this famous instinct, darling,' Cass said patiently. 'But unless you're suggesting that that grim Sister actually went and murdered the poor old nurse—'

'Hastened her death,' Jemima put in; but she already sounded doubtful. 'Nurse Elsie was dying anyway. No, no, I'm not exactly suggesting that.'

'Then was it the boy's mother, the gracious Marchioness of St Ives no less?'

'No, no, of course not.'

'Because according to the nurse's story, and that's all you have to go on, my love, Lady St Ives didn't know anything about the substitution in the first place. So she didn't even have a motive.'

'She could have realized something was wrong later,' Jemima countered. 'We've agreed that the boy himself must be about twenty now. Twenty years is a long time in which to bring up somebody else's child and suspect nothing. It depends a good deal on what the boy looks like, of course. I never got a chance to ask Nurse Elsie about any of the details. We all know what Lord St Ives looks like even if we do tend to see him in terms of Marc's cartoons, a series of long thin terribly aristocratic lines, that long straight nose and single na
rrow line for a mouth. But what
about her? I have an image of a typical English lady of a certain type forever meeting her husband at airports with a brave smile.'

At which point Cass Brinsley said very firmly, 'Enough of this. I'm going to distract you forever with an enormous therapeutic draught of Buck's Fizz. I have in mind filling one of your numerous television awards to the brim: there must be a silver goblet amongst them.'

'Unfillable statuettes in the main, I fear.' All the same Jemima allowed herself to be distracted.

Under the circumstances it was hardly surprising that by Monday morning Jemima was in a very different frame of mind. She certainly did not expect to hear of the late Nurse Elsie Connolly again, nor of Sister Imelda of Pieta House, still less of the youthful heir Lord Saffron. Besides, Monday morning was to be the occasion of a full-dress confrontation with Cy Fredericks on the subject of their rival concerns - crabbed age, in the case of Jemima Shore, or at any rate the approach of same, and youth 'full of pleasance' in the case of Cy Fredericks. The nature of the new series had to be decided shortly, or at least the nature of the first programme.

It never did to have your mind in anyway distracted when confronting Cy, as Jemima knew to her cost; while the information, derived from Cy's secretary via Cherry, that Cy Fredericks was currently pursuing a gilded moppet called Tiggie, filled her with additional dread. Cy Fredericks' romantic attachments were closely monitored by those in the know at Megalithic House, since all too often they provided the vital clue to what otherwise seemed a totally irrational enthusiasm for a particular programme.

If only Cy would stick to Lady Manfred! thought Jemima as she wheedled her little white Mercedes sports car into the Megalithic car park. Cultured, music-loving, above all gracefully
middle-aged,
Lady Manfred demanded no more of Megalith than a generalized support of the opera, of which Jemima for one thoroughly approved. But an attachment for the notorious Tiggie Jones (Tiggie forsooth! could anyone with a name like Tiggie bode well for Megalith?), twenty-three-year-old Tiggie, the darling of the gossip columns according to Cherry, Tiggie of the long legs and roving eyes, according to the photographers, that was definitely bad news. It also helped to explain why Cy was being at once devious and obstinate in his determination to make a programme tentatively entitled - by him - 'Golden Lads and Girls'. (Had he, Jemima wondered, ever read the actual poem from which the quotation came? The conclusion might come as a surprise to him.)

Cy Fredericks' opening ploy at the meeting was also his valediction.

'You deserve a holiday, Jem, and this,
in
effect,
is going to be it.' Jemima pondered inwardly on the potential menace contained in those two little words 'in effect' on the lips of the Chairman of Megalith.

Outwardly she merely smiled sweetly, that charming smile which made people watching television think what a nice warm human being she was.

'I'm afraid I don't find the idea of investigating a lot of poor-little-rich kids at university quite my notion of a holiday. It's now the eighteenth of January. How about that programme on the growth of feminism in the West Indies? An interesting subject and an interesting location. I could be ready to leave for preliminary discussions in a week or two. First stop Barbados.'

There was a short silence. Cy Fredericks was clearly remembering that he himself had just rented a luxurious villa on that very island and wondered whether Jemima was aware of that fact. (She was: his secretary had told Cherry, who had told Jemima.) Cy solved the problem in his usual galvanic fashion.

'Jem, my dear Jem,' he murmured, leaning across the vast desk and grasping, with some difficulty, her hand. 'We've been too much out of touch lately. We need to talk, really talk. Miss Lewis!' he suddenly shouted in a voice of great agitation, dropping the hand and gazing rather wildly round him. 'Miss Lewis! Are you there?'

There was an acquiescent noise from the outer office. Although Cy had in fact a perfectly efficient intercom, he never seemed to have the necessary leisure to master it.

'Miss Lewis! When am I next free for lunch?'

Miss Lewis, a neat young woman in a silk shirt, check skirt and well polished brown boots, entered hastily, bearing a leather diary which she deposited in front of her employer. Cy gazed at it for a moment with an expression of outraged disbelief and then, in silence, proceeded to score out a number of entries with great violence. Finally he looked up and beamed at Jemima.

'So! For you, Jemima, I drop everything. We shall have our heart to heart. Exchange of souls. Lunch on February the twenty-eighth.'

'I can't wait,' said Jemima.

Negotiating the white Mercedes once more out of the Megalith car park that afternoon, Jemima was wearily aware that the chances of her
not
spending a few cold winter weeks in and around Oxford University to say nothing of the other equally unpleasing (to Jemima Shore) haunts of the young and rich, were rapidly diminishing. To console herself, and while away the time in the heavy traffic she put on a tape of
Arabella
and waited for her favourite song beginning: 'Aber der Richtige
..
.' 'The man who's right for me, if there is one for me in all this world'. But the thought of the right man coming along put her uncomfortably in mind of Cass Brinsley: did
he
think
she
was the right woman . . . Could anyone, even a lawyer, be quite so detached? It was to distract herself from these -essentially unprofitable - thoughts that Jemima jumped out of the car in a traffic block and bought an evening paper.

At the next lights she glanced down at the headlines, particularly glaring this evening, accompanied by a large photograph. The next moment she found herself staring, the car still in gear, her neck still craning down. It took some frantic hootings all round her to tell Jemima Shore that the lights had turned green and that the heavy crocodile of lorries, trucks and cars was supposed to be rattling forward once more up Holland Park Avenue.

The newspaper photograph showed a handsome young man, very young and very handsome: the flash bulb had perhaps exaggerated the dramatic effect of the wide eyes and high cheekbones, the thick hair, apparently black, a lock falling across the forehead. Even so the looks were sufficiently startling to make Jemima suppose for a moment she was gazing at the face of a pop star. And the rather wide mouth and well-formed lips confirmed the impression of a pop star to a generation brought up on the ultimate pop-star looks of Mick Jagger, although this young man was more distinguished, less roguish-looking than Jumping Jack Flash. His clothes too were more deliberately Byronic: he was wearing something which looked like a white stock above a ruffled shirt. It was not, to Jemima at any rate, a very sympathetic face. Or perhaps the expression of arrogance was, like the contrast in the looks, purely the creation of the flash bulb.

A pop star in trouble. For the young man in question had been photographed leaving some court or other. It was the caption which corrected Jemima's error, and the text beneath it which caused her to stare and stare again at the newspaper.

OXFORD BLOOD SAYS 'NO REGRETS'
'Gilded Rubbish' - Magistrate

Twenty-year-old Viscount Saffron, undergraduate heir of former Foreign Secretary, the Marquess of St Ives, pictured leaving Oxford magistrates' court yesterday, where he was fined £750 with costs. He was among other students found guilty of causing damage to the Martyrs Hotel, Cornmarket, Oxford, after a student party following an exclusive (£50 a head) Chimneysweepers' Dinner of the 'Oxford Bloods'. High-living Lord Saffron, heir to what is estimated to be one of the largest landed fortunes in Britain, told reporters that he had 'no regrets' about the damage caused to the hotel, 'since he had plenty of money to pay for it'. Lord Saffron added with a laugh: 'There's nothing wrong with money, so long as you don't earn it.'

Jemima, as she sped forward once more amid the hooting cars, felt sick then angry. Oxford Blood indeed! You scarcely needed a knowledge of the latest unemployment figures - which some sardonic newspaperman had in any case thoughtfully placed alongside the lead item concerning Lord Saffron - to be disgusted by such a gratuitous display of upper-class insolence. Jemima felt herself in total sympathy with the remarks of the magistrate who referred feelingly to behaviour 'unacceptable in supporters of a football club' and all the more disgraceful in someone who had been raised 'in such a privileged manner' as Lord Saffron.

The magistrate was also particularly incensed by the fact that Oxford Bloods called their function the Chimneysweepers' Dinner, thus mocking what had once been a decent profession for a working man; many people, he opined, would regard these young people themselves as mere 'gilded rubbish', at the bottom rather than the top of society. And this was the type of delightful young person Cy Fredericks expected her to study in his precious
Golden Lads and Girls
programme. By the time she reached her flat, Jemima had worked herself into a royal rage which even Midnight's soft purring welcome round her ankles hardly assuaged.

She studied the story in the newspaper in detail - nearly a thousand pounds' worth of damage had been caused by the so-called Oxford Bloods at their Chimneysweepers' Dinner (presumably its members, unlike Cy, did know how the 'Golden Lads' rhyme ended). Lord Saffron had the pleasure of paying that sum as well as the fine. Glasses and plates had been smashed: well, that, if not edifying, was not so surprising, and various other pieces of minor vandalism carried out; but the principal item consisted of repairs to a marble mantelpiece which had been deliberately attacked by Lord Saffron with a hammer. Hence the fact that the case had been brought against him personally rather than the various other members of the club.

About that damage, young Lord Saffron had been theoretically penitent, or at any rate his lawyer had been so on his behalf. Outside the court however he had positively revelled in the destruction of something he castigated as 'artistically beyond redemption and fortunately now beyond repair'.

Jemima took a cold bottle of white wine out of the fridge and looked out of her wide uncurtained windows towards her winter balcony. Delicate exterior lighting made it into another room. A large pot of yellow witch hazel was flowering. Daring the cold Jemima pulled back the glass, cut a sprig, and put it in a little vase at her elbow. Soon the delicate sad perfume was stealing into her nostrils.

She would run a bath, allow the Floris Wild Hyacinth oil to challenge the
ham
amelis mollis,
sip the wine, listen to Mozart (Clarinet Quintet, guaranteed to soothe and transport) and in complete contrast to that, yes, she would glory in the new Ruth Rendell, hoping it was one of her macabre ones
...
She would forget
Golden Lads and Girls.
She would forget the odious and arrogant Lord Saffron. Above all she would forget Cy Fredericks
...

So that when the telephone rang as though deliberately intending to thwart these plans, Jemima knew, absolutely knew, that it was Cy. White wine to her lips, she allowed the answering machine, a serene robot insensitive to both slight and triumph, to take the call.

'This is Jemima Shore,' cooed the recorded voice back into the face of the real Jemima. 'I'm afraid I'm not here...' The perfect twentieth-century double talk.

She then expected Cy to do one of two things: fling down the receiver with a strangled groan (he quite often did that; after all it was the dreaded technology, something he did not trust as far as he could see it) or simply leave one deeply reproachful word on the machine: 'Jem.' The implication of this one word was quite clear. 'Where are you? I need you.'