Death Lives Next Door. Gwendoline Butler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and savage effect upon his emotions. From a nice, polite, quiet if boring man who was just buying Joyo a friendly cup of coffee while he waited for his train, he was transformed into a loud talker and hard knee-gripper. Poor Joyo was horrified and at once began to think of ways to keep his voice and his hand down; she was experienced and worldly enough to recognise that it was for her to cope. Sadly she recalled the man in Bow who had climbed up the window curtains and the man in Southend who had crawled under the table. Neurotics seemed to be her lot.

      Fortunately the stain of coffee on the cloth, long and boot-shaped, reminded him of Italy, and Italy of the Battle of Cassino.

      “Here was us,” he said, sprinkling sugar in a circle lavishly round the table. “Here were the Jerries,” and a large amount of salt went down. “Here’s the mountain,” and he staggered over with the coffee urn, then to Joyo’s horror began to look around for the Benedictine Monastery. There was a bottle of Benedictine on a shelf within his reach and his hand stretched out for it. “Here we are,” he said cheerfully, “very suitable.” And the bottle went on top of the coffee urn. Joyo was heartily glad that the proprietor was on the telephone, and got to her feet with a view to slipping out.

      Unluckily the coalman, who had finished his dancing, had also been at the Battle of Cassino.

      “Here,” he said. “Here, chum, you’ve got it all wrong. We were here.” He sugared yet another area of the cloth. “And the Jerries were here.” This time he used pepper and Joyo at once began to sneeze loudly.

      “Naw,” said a third man also coming over. “That’s not right. What you want …”

      “Were you there?”

      “Naw,” said the man, “never left England, not me. In a reserved occupation. But I’ve been watching Monty on television, see. He ought to know. You’ve got the monastery in the wrong place … It was lower down.”

      Joyo was desperately embarrassed, and tried to look as though she had nothing to do with them, but they would not let her get away with this, and pressed her into service to stand between them as the Tenth German Army Group. A dangerous thing to be she began to feel as it looked as though the believer in the Up Monastery and the believer in the Down Monastery might come to blows over this issue before they could fight out the battle proper.

      “You don’t know nothing about it,” sneered the coalman, rapidly seizing the bottle of Benedictine. “Everyone knows the ruddy old monastery was at the top. That’s what the battle was about.” As he spoke his fingers were quickly but almost absently undoing the bottle. He sniffed. “Only a dummy,” he said, disappointed.

      Joyo was under the table by this time, hoping that no one would notice her, but as she was still sneezing she was afraid they might. But the disappointment over the bottle, in which all three seemed to share, reconciled them and they sat down and began to talk over the Italian campaign. No one took any more notice of Joyo and after a bit she crept out from under the table and went home. But she saw the proprietor emerge fiercely as she left. It might be as well, reflected Joyo, to keep out of the Mocha Mecca for some time. Besides, she had a small memento of the Mecca in her pocket.

      The coalman finished his job and the van moved off. It was easier now for Joyo to see across the road.

      Yes, the watcher was still there. What was he doing? What was he doing in Marion’s life? She felt sure he had come to see Marion. She felt a little premonitory thrill of terror.

      And from her kitchen window she could see, what Ezra could not see, that Rachel was lurking in the corner between the house and high wall.

Chapter Two

      Someone had once called Rachel the girl who knows everybody and there was a lot of truth in this. Rachel was of academic stock: a member of a real old Oxford family, as yet another friend had said. In fact, you might have said of three important Oxford families, all of them inter-married into one famous clan. The families were: the Leavers, the Boxers and the Hansoms; all equally distinguished and equally clever. Old President Leaver had had the honour, way back in the nineteenth century, of leading his college forward into the world of science; he was not a scientist himself, but he had seen the advisability of electing an eminent scientist to a fellowship at a time when this was not so common in Oxford. He had thus established himself for ever as an advanced man and his family were bound to be advanced and liberal also. It had sometimes been difficult for his descendants to be advanced and liberal enough, they had sought for causes to show their progressive minds, they had advocated votes for women and birth control, they had fought in the Spanish Civil War, and since then they had signed peace pledges, denounced colour bars and marched upon rocket bases. It was difficult for their fellow-citizens to deny that they were very often right in what they proclaimed, but all the same they were irritating people.

      The Boxers had brought plain dottiness into the clan; it was a highly intellectual dottiness and, therefore, much prized in Oxford circles. Dr. Boxer was famous as the man who failed to remember the face of his own wife after an exceptionally dull dinner party at his own house and thrust her out into the cold after the departing guests with the remark: “Go home, dear lady!” He did not drink, so it was not to be explained that way. He was also noted for his command of seven different languages and for the polite abuse he could utter in all of them. He had been heard to boast in his high sweet voice when in the seclusion of his college common-room when his colleagues were occupied with port and thick cigars that he knew the verb “to …” (and here he would leave a blank and wag his wicked old white head and titter) in all European languages. His friends believed him and were impressed.

      The Hansoms were something different again: they were the heavy-weights, the men you could be sure of. They went into the Foreign Service and had important embassies abroad, they were in the Treasury or the Cabinet Office, and just lately they had taken an interest in Television. But the Hansoms, scattered by their duties as they necessarily were, remembered that above everything they were an Oxford family. If any issue of importance came before Convocation, that vast gathering together of all Oxford Masters of Arts by which Oxford in theory alone rules itself, then you could be sure that the Hansoms would come cycling in from their country livings, or drive down in fast cars from London, or even fly in to prevent some disaster such as women taking degrees or W. H. Auden becoming Professor of Poetry; they were usually unsuccessful.

      This ancestry had given Rachel great assurance, not social assurance, she hardly recognised the need for that, but intellectual assurance. With four generations of right thinking behind her, she felt convinced beyond the need even to consider it that the standards, values and judgements of her group and people like her were forever right.

      Physically she took after her grandfather Boxer who had been a very beautiful man. In addition she had a sense of humour which may have come from him, too.

      The combination of all these qualities, Boxer, Leaver and Hansom, was pretty paralysing and there were many who found Rachel a paralysing problem.

      “I’d as soon make love to a man-eating spider,” declared the young man who had complained that Rachel knew everyone.

      Rachel had become an anthropologist and this was how she came Marion’s way. She had read and admired the young Marion’s study of the Alpha tribes of Central America and had sought her out. No one knew how Marion felt about being remembered as an anthropologist, Rachel was the first person who had had the courage to speak about it to her face. However, even Rachel found that Marion had her reserves; and yet a steely friendship grew up between the two.

      In this friendship Joyo by no means shared, although СКАЧАТЬ