Oxford Blood Page 5

  'As if there weren't enough members of my family crowding about her anyway,' he went on. 'Nurse Elsie produced my cousins as well as gorgeous me; in fact her invaluable attentions were about the only thing Cousin Daphne Iverstone and my mother had in common, and they both competed in being sentimental about her. So if Cousin Daphne went, Ma had to go, and if Jack and Fanny went to say the final goodbye, I had to go. What rubbish. Nothing to do with death.'

  In spite of all her good resolutions, Jemima found herself feeling both excited and apprehensive. For the first time that day, young Lord Saffron had genuinely engaged her attention. She was determined not to let the opportunity drop, determined not to return to the tedious (to her) subject of his luxurious Oxford life-style. She was wondering how to frame her next question when she heard hurried footsteps on the stairs. Expecting either Tiggie or perhaps Cherry mounting a rescue operation, Jemima saw instead a tall thin young man whose appearance was so essentially English that you could have mounted his photograph as a travel poster. With curly brown hair, rather small blue eyes, a longish nose and high healthy colour, the stranger had the air of an eighteenth century gentleman, except for his clothes which were distinctly modern -jeans and a baggy brown jersey over a check shirt. He also had a pile of books under his arm.

  'At the champagne already, I see, Saffer—' Then the stranger noticed Jemima and paused.

  'Miss Jemima Shore,' said Saffron in a silky voice. 'May I introduce my cousin Jack Iverstone? He probably wants me to subscribe to something thoroughly decent. In which case I shall refuse. He also comes fresh from a lecture by the look of him which always has a deplorable effect on the temper.'

  'Oh don't be so affected, Saffer,' said a girl's clear voice from the doorway. 'As if you'd ever been near a lecture. Good afternoon, Miss Shore, I'm a great admirer of your work, particularly that programme The Pill - For or Against? It certainly needed saying. Why should we all drop dead for the sake of some international chemists? Now listen Saffer, you've got to come and have lunch with us. Oh, I'm Saffer's cousin, Fanny Iverstone, by the way, Miss Shore. You see, Saffer, Mummy's come down to talk to Jack about his wicked political views - or wicked according to her and Daddy. We thought you would distract her—'

  'Certainly not!’ exclaimed Saffron. 'This is going too far, even for you, Fanny. You out-boss Mrs Thatcher sometimes, besides not being nearly so pretty. I am having lunch with Jemima Shore. She's going to do wonders for my image on television.'

  Fanny Iverstone turned her eyes - clear blue like her brother's - on Jemima Shore. In other ways too, she was like a girlish version of Jack Iverstone, Jemima thought, with her fresh complexion plus a few freckles, paler pink cheeks, and shoulder-length curly brown hair tied at the back with a bow. Her expression, however, was not particularly girlish.

  'Miss Shore!' cried Fanny. 'Now why don't you have lunch with all of us? We're having lunch at La Lycee, in any case wonderful material for your programme - anybody who can afford the Lycee mid-week has to be a golden lad or laddess.'

  Jemima noted that Fanny Iverstone knew all about her programme. She was coming to the conclusion that everybody in Oxford knew everything they cared to know about anything they cared to know about. Which left a good deal unknown.

  'Which college are you at, Fanny?' she asked politely. Although not suitable for the Golden Lads programme - there was something far too sensible about Fanny, even her clothes were quite sensible - her remark about Jemima's previous series had struck an agreeable chord. Maybe when Jemima had researched the Golden Lads sufficiently, and assured

  Cy it would not make an interesting programme, she could return to Oxford and make something of this new intelligent generation of women undergraduates, the post-Brideshead types, living in colleges in equal numbers and on equal terms with the men. Fanny Iverstone would be most suitable material for that.

  'Good heavens, I'm not at Oxford,' exclaimed Fanny cheerfully, shattering this dream. 'At the school Mummy sent me to, they raised a cheer if you got a couple of O-levels, let alone A-levels. No, I'm doing shorthand typing at Mrs Bone's.'

  'All the same Fanny is at Oxford,' commented Jack. 'Wherever Fanny is, she's at’

  'I'm looking after my little brother!' Jemima thought Fanny was probably not being ironic. 'And my little cousin too,' she went on in the same fond voice, 'except that's impossible.'

  Then Fanny returned to a more bracing tone.

  'Come on, Jemima - may I call you that? I've seen you so often on the telly. Do come to lunch. Mummy's not nearly as terrible as the Press make out. And then she simply adores Saffer here; it's her dreadful snobbishness I fear, the future head of the family and all that. She doesn't object to his wicked ways one bit. Unlike us.'

  And yet Saffron was convinced that Daphne Iverstone's husband Andrew hated him, thought Jemima, if not on the surface at least deep down. Had hated him since birth. Did Daphne Iverstone really not resent Saffron's late appearance in the family tree? Out of curiosity about the Iverstone family rather than some finer professional instinct towards the programme, Jemima accepted the invitation to lunch. At all events it would be a relief to leave Staircase Thirteen, with its slightly sinister atmosphere, for the peace of a comfortable restaurant.

  5

  Fight Before the Death

  In the course of lunch Jemima decided that Fanny Iverstone was wrong. Mrs Andrew Iverstone was worse, really much worse than the Press made out. What made her worse was not the nature of her neo-racialist politics, which seemed to have been fairly accurately reported, but the odious whimsicality with which she presented them. There were references to 'horrid freezing old England' and the 'sweet negroes, why do they want to come here and get pneumonia, the poor darlings? I wish someone would give me a lot of lovely money to go to Jamaica.'

  'Blacks, Mummy.' Jack Iverstone looked at his plate as he spoke. 'Blacks, Mummy, not negroes.'

  'I know, darling, I know. And I know you have lots of lovely friends like that. That marvellous cricketer. But that's different. You can't compare someone who looks divine in white flannels, someone at Oxford, with some illiterate monkey straight off—'

  She's going to say it, thought Jemima, she's going to say, straight off the trees. I don't believe it. In 1985, in so-called civilized society. Then Fanny Iverstone saved the day as Jemima suspected she had done on more than one occasion.

  'Oh come on, Mummy,' she said brightly. 'You know how you loved going to India and staying with that Maharajah. Didn't you and Daddy go tiger-hunting on your honeymoon?' This certainly had the effect of stopping Mrs Iverstone in her tracks and changing her tone from one of persistent whimsicality to that of nostalgia, even tenderness.

  'Ah but Sonny Mekwar was different, quite different. A thousand years of breeding went into that man. You knew it immediately you saw him play polo for example. Such an aristocrat. Some of those Maharajahs go back almost as far as the Iverstones, you know.'

  'Crooks and robbers. Successful crooks.' Jack spoke as before, looking at his plate.

  'What was that, my love?' Jemima thought she detected a sharper note beneath Mrs Iverstone's honeyed sweetness.

  'I was referring to the early history of the Iverstone family. I thought you were too. The first Iverstones were robber barons who managed to terrorize their neighbours in East Anglia sufficiently to acquire large amounts of land ...'

  Throughout this conversation, Saffron had remained quite silent, occasionally eyeing Tiggie Jones. The latter had insisted on joining the lunch party in her usual imperious fashion on the grounds that she had been sent down to Oxford by Megalith in order to accompany Jemima Shore, and could not desert her.

  'I'm your chaperone, Jemima,' Tiggie had said with a roll of her eyes. 'I can't let Saffer just abduct you and not protest.' That however was not the full extent of her interference with the lunch arrangements. When Tiggie discovered that the party would be at least two men short, she promptly roped in Professor Mossbanker. He was now having an earnest conversation wit
h Cherry about classical ethics in the television world, a subject on which Cherry was enchanted to give her views, having unaccountably never been asked before. To Jemima's expert eye, the professor was very promising Cherry-material, being sufficiently advanced in years, and certainly substantial, if you counted an Oxford professorship; which Jemima guessed Cherry, distracted from the Dukes, now would. The father of eight children was certainly substantial, in some sense of the word.

  Then Tiggie had routed out Saffron's neighbour at the top of the staircase, a dark-haired young man, not unlike Saffron himself in build and type, if less handsome, whose name no one (except presumably Saffron) seemed to know. At least the unknown had a large appetite. Jemima asked his name and, between mouthfuls, the unknown said something that sounded like 'Bim'. After that she let him get on with his food.

  But the unknown's appetite prompted Jemima to wonder: who was paying the bill for this large lunch party at Oxford's most expensive restaurant? If the answer was Megalith Television, then the idea of paying for Daphne Iverstone's lunch stuck in her gullet. On the other hand it seemed unfair - at least by normal standards - to make Daphne Iverstone pay a huge bill for what had originally been a family lunch party, whatever her political views.

  The question was suddenly solved.

  In the middle of the conversation, Saffron stood up. He did so before the unknown 'Bim' had finished his double ice-cream (Professor Mossbanker, the other sweet-eater, had eaten very fast, so fast in fact that his spoon had on occasion been seen to skim an extra scoop of ice-cream off his neighbour's plate).

  'All this talk of ancestors is so terribly exhausting, it reminds me that I simply must go and have a sleep before my tutorial at five. No better preparation, don't you think? A fresh mind and all that.'

  'No essay again, Saffer?' But Jack Iverstone sounded indulgent as well as reproachful.

  'My dear Jack! You know I've been in London for days .. . My magic moment in court left me with an urgent need to recover. Then I had to go home to pacify Pa and Ma. Adieu, one and all. Oh and by the way, Cousin Daphne, don't worry about the bill. I've signed it. Nobility obliges.'

  Lord Saffron sauntered off. Jemima watched his retreating back. Reluctantly, she had to admit that he had a certain style. To her annoyance, however, she still had not the faintest inkling whether Daphne Iverstone loathed or adored the boy who had dispossessed the claims of her own husband - and son - to inherit Saffron Ivy. To that extent, the lunch had been a failure, since Daphne Iverstone had been too busy discoursing on race to address Saffron, and he had been too busy gazing at Tiggie Jones. So much for her famous detective instinct. This meditation was interrupted by a very loud clear voice somewhere at the front of the restaurant.

  'There goes Saffer, the biggest shit in Oxford,' said the voice.

  Lord Saffron's steps did not falter.

  'There goes Saffer the Shit,' repeated the voice. 'Come on, aren't you going to break up this restaurant too? And then pay up with Daddy's money?'

  Jemima now focussed on a table at the front of the restaurant, to be compared with their own in size, except that all those sitting at it were apparently young. There was no Daphne Iverstone figure, let alone a Professor Mossbanker. The most noticeable figure - because of his remarkable colouring - was a young man with a shock of violently red hair, and an accompanying pallor which was almost morbid. He reminded Jemima, still in her pre-Raphaelite mood, of the dying poet Thomas Chatterton in Wallis's portrait. Oddly enough, the girl next to him was also red-haired, but the colour more russet, the pallor less pronounced. The man next to her was also striking, not so much through his colouring but because he was exceptionally big; the huge shoulders and thick short neck of a rugger player, or at least that was the impression he gave.

  'Rufus Pember,' Fanny Iverstone spoke with something like a groan, 'and that frightful heavy of his, Big Nigel Copley. Worst of all, Little Miss Muffet Pember is along as well. Now what's going to happen?'

  Afterwards Jemima found it difficult to remember exactly what did happen, or rather the order in which it happened. Did Saffron turn and hit Rufus Pember first? Or was the whole fight set off by Tiggie Jones, who scurried to the distant table, surprisingly fast on her tottering high heels, and slapped Rufus Pember in the face? At all events, both blows were certainly struck, followed by other blows, as Big Nigel Copley lurched and blundered to his feet, revealing his breadth to be fully matched by his height. And at some point the innocent Bim got involved, cheered on by Tiggie but receiving quite a lot of punishment at the hands of Big Nigel as a result.

  Jemima found herself watching the faces of the group at her table. Daphne Iverstone's prim little face - she had incongruously rosebud looks, a rosebud faded and dried up with the years but still recognizable for what it was - looked ardent, excited. As Saffron felled Rufus Pember, who fell with a crash on a nearby table, sending glass and forks flying, Daphne Iverstone gave a kind of sigh. She certainly did not hate Saffron even if her husband did. This looked more like the adoration to which her daughter Fanny referred.

  Fanny herself had an air of wear)' tolerance as though she had witnessed plenty of such incidents among undergraduates in expensive Oxford restaurants (as no doubt she had). Cherry screamed and clutched Professor Mossbanker's hand, a situation he accepted with equanimity, patting the little hand briefly before pouring on with his conversation. His own participation in the proceedings was limited to the expression 'tribal rites' which he repeated several times with evident satisfaction, before returning to his dissertation on wartime parties at the Dorchester, on their importance in bringing to an end all proper Anglo-American understanding.

  Only Jack Iverstone looked absolutely horrified at what was happening. After a minute he jumped up, crying something like: 'Why will he do it?' and then 'For Christ's sake, Saffer.' So saying he rushed over to the fray, which was being watched helplessly by two young French waiters, definitely too slight to deal with the burly figures of the contestants. Tiggie herself had by this time retired to the sidelines, or rather the lap of one of the other Iunchers not involved in the fracas - one could only assume he was a previous acquaintance as Tiggie seemed much at home in her situation, sucking her finger and cheering on Saffron. Saffron himself, in spite of the blows landed on Rufus Pember, was beginning to get very much the worst of it at the hands of the huge Copley, while Bim remained prone on the floor.

  'It's disgusting!' said a woman in a brown velvet hat very loudly at the table next to Jemima's. 'Why doesn't someone do something? We haven't come here to watch a fight.'

  'They should all be sent into the Army,' remarked her companion, a middle-aged man, grimly. 'These young fellows need a good sergeant-major to take the stuffing out of them. When National Service ended - criminal, I said so at the time—' Jemima stopped listening, but not before the woman in the brown velvet hat had contributed something about the waste of taxpayers' money.

  It was Jack Iverstone in fact who ended the fight, ended it just as the proprietor - a very small and very angry Frenchman - announced his intention of sending for the police. With admirable courage, Jack pushed his way between the contestants and put his hand on his cousin's chest.

  'You bloody fool, Saffer. Do you want to be sent down?'

  Saffron stared back, dishevelled, panting, and said nothing.

  'Do you want to make the headlines in the Post every day?' went on Jack.

  'Come on then, man,' said Saffron after a minute, in an approximation of his usual languid manner, inhibited by breathlessness, 'let's leave this unholy mess. Oh yes, yes, I'll pay—' thrown in the direction of the proprietor '—Viscount Saffron, Rochester College.'

  Staggering slightly, but with his shoulders squared, Saffron headed for the stairs as though the mess of wine and glass and food he left behind him simply did not exist. Jack Iverstone hesitated, looked round where his party still sat, stunned, at their table, and then went after Saffron.

  'See you later, Saffer!' called out the man named
Bim suddenly from the floor.

  'See you in Hell!' shouted a voice from the rival table. Was it Rufus Pember or the enormous Nigel Copley? Or one of the others at the table who, to do them credit, had not joined in the affray. 'We'll get you, you—' a stream of obscenities followed. 'And when we get you, Saffer, there won't be anything to help you, not Daddy's money, not The Taller, nor the Queen.'

  'Aren't they terrible?' Daphne Iverstone's voice cut sweetly across the invective, like some light soprano joining a bass ensemble. 'I don't think people like that should be allowed to eat in good restaurants, do you, Miss Shore? Poor darling Saffer. He's led a very sheltered life, you know, with such elderly parents, wonderful people of course, but so old when he was born. He was terribly protected. I did try to warn Gwendolen. I wonder if he was quite ready for Oxford.'

  There was a sublimity about Mrs Iverstone's blindness to her young cousin's failings - well, almost a sublimity. No question but that she adored him. No question also but that there were a great many other people presently within Oxford who did not.

  The lunch party - what there was left of it - dispersed. Jemima came upon Jack Iverstone unlocking his bicycle from a nearby railing as she left the restaurant. Saffron had vanished.

  'Are you going back to Rochester?' she asked.

  'No, to the Bodleian,' he answered rather shortly. Then as if to apologize for a temporary lapse in courtesy, he added with a smile: 'The Bodleian is a wonderful cure for bad temper.' Then: 'So what did you think of Rochester, Miss Shore?'

  'It's a beautiful college. Architecturally.'

  'Oh quite. I'm at St Lucy's myself.' And Jack Iverstone rode away on his bicycle.

  That night anyone within Rochester gazing at Hawksmoor's exquisite facade would have seen one patch of darkness among the lighted archways: Staircase Thirteen alone was not illuminated by an overhead light inside the arch. The impression given by this dark gap might have been mysterious and even slightly sinister. Unless a watcher reflected that a missing light bulb, far from being an abnormal phenomenon in the archway of an Oxford college, was in fact nothing out of the ordinary, given the relative durability of light bulbs and the lack of housekeeperly attention to detail in such surroundings.