The Jewel That Was Ours (25 page)

'Cedric! How that bloody woman has lived this long without getting murdered . . .'

Cedric grinned his sad, lopsided grin, removed the somewhat disturbing hand, and looked at her - her upper and lower lips of almost equal thickness, moist and parted, and temptingly squashable. She was a woman he had known for several years now; one with whom he had never slept; one who half repelled, and ever half attracted him.

'Look! I've got to be off. I've got a tutorial shortly, and I ought to sober up a bit between times.'

‘Why do that, darling?'

'Sheila! You're a lovely girl, but you - you let yourself down when you drink too much.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake! Not you as well.'

'Yes!
Me
as well!
And I've got to go. I'm meeting Lucy off the train later on anyway, and if you want to know the truth' - he looked about him with rolling eyes - 'I'm completely pissed off with the whole of this bloody set-up. I've done my best, though. First I stood in for—' Suddenly he stopped. 'Sorry, Sheila! I shouldn't have said that. Forgive me!' He kissed her lightly on the cheek, then turned and walked out of the hotel.

As Sheila watched him go, she knew that in spite of the hurtful words he had just spoken she would always have a soft spot for the man. But she knew, too, what a lousy judge of men she'd always been. Her husband! God! A quietly cultivated, top-of-the-head English don, incurably in the grip of the Oxford Disease - that tragic malady which deludes its victims into believing they can never be wrong in any matter of knowledge or opinion. What a disaster that had all been! Then a series of feckless, selfish, vain admirers . . . then Theo. Poor Theo! But at least he was -had been - an interesting and vital and daring sort of man.

Sheila walked slowly over to the window and watched Cedric as he wheeled his bicycle across Beaumont Street towards St Giles'. He never drove his car if he was having any drink with his lunch. Not like some people she'd known. Not like Theo, for instance . . . He'd been over the limit, they'd said, when he'd crashed his BMW, and there could have been no sympathy whatsoever for him from the relatives of the woman killed in the other car.
Or
from his wife, of course - his bloody wife! And yet there was the suggestion that he'd been just a little unlucky, perhaps? Certainly many people had

mumbled all that stuff about 'there but for the grace of God . ..' And there
was
a lot of luck in life: some people would go to jail for badger-baiting; but if they'd baited just the foxes they'd like as not be having sherry the next day with the Master of the Foxhounds. Yes, Theo
may
have been a fraction unlucky about that accident. Even unluckier now.

And Cedric? Was he right - about what he'd just said? Already that morning she had drunk more than the weekly average for women she'd noticed displayed on a chart in the Summertown Health Centre waiting-room. But when she was drinking, she was (or so she told herself) perfectly conscious of all her thoughts and actions. It was only when she was reasonably sober, when, say, she woke up in the morning, head throbbing, tongue parched, that she suspected in retrospect that she hadn't been quite so rationally conscious of those selfsame thoughts and actions . . .

God! What a mess her life was in!

She looked miserably back across the coffee-lounge, where several of the group were mumbling none too happily. Six o'clock. Morse had changed their departure-time to six o'clock, unless something dramatic occurred in the meantime.

She walked through into the Lancaster Room again, where Phil Aldrich was still scribbling away on the hotel's notepaper; and for the moment (as Sheila stood in the doorway) looking up with his wonted patience and nodding mildly as Janet propounded her latest views on the injustice of the tour's latest delay. But even as Sheila stood there, his mood had changed. None too quietly, he asked the woman if she would mind leaving him alone, just for a while, since he had something more important to do for the minute than listen to her gripes and belly-aching.

Who would have believed it?

Sheila had heard most of the exchange; and, with the volume of Janet's voice, so probably had several of the others too. It had been a devastating rebuke from the quiet little fellow from California; and as Sheila watched the hurt face of the formidable little woman from the same State (wasn't it the same Church, too?), she almost felt a tinge of sympathy for Mrs Janet Roscoe. Almost.

Lewis, too, had been watching as Aldrich wrote out his statement; and wondering how a man could write so fluently. Huh! When Aldrich handed it to him there were only three crossings out in the whole thing.

Thou hast committed Fornication; but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead

(Christopher Marlowe,
The Jew of Malta)

Just a song at twilight

When the lights are low And the flick'ring shadows

Softly come and go . . .

(From the English Song Book)