Oxford Blood

by Antonia Fraser

  It was then that Jemima took a sudden resolve, spurred on as it were by her mingled indignation towards Lord Saffron and her dislike of the unknown telephonic intruders. Two could play at that game.

  She dialled Cy's private number. He answered with alacrity, which in Jemima's experience meant not so much that he was free but that he was engaged talking on at least two of his other lines, and was picking up the private one purely in order to still its clangour. She had analysed the situation correctly.

  'Jem - one moment - Venetia—' (into some other demanding mouthpiece). 'Is that you? One moment, Jem, one moment - darling, one moment - No, New York, I hear you, ne coupez pas, ne coupez pas. Miss Lewis, where are you?' he suddenly bellowed. 'Please take this call from New York.'

  Miss Lewis' calm voice speaking to Jemima Shore was quite a relief, and once Jemima had made it clear she was neither the switchboard of the Carlyle Hotel in New York, nor that of the Hotel Meurice in Paris, both of which Cy was apparently trying to engage in word play, they were able to have a pleasantly sardonic exchange on the subject of Cy's telephone habits until interrupted by his next bellow:

  'Miss Lewis, Miss Lewis, what is the Meurice doing in New York?'

  'Mr Fredericks—'

  'Speaking perfect French too,' Cy proceeded. 'Not a trace of an accent.'

  All in all, it was sometime before this international cat's cradle was unravelled. Finally Jemima was allowed her own exchange with Cy.

  Threatened as she was by New York, Paris, Lady Manfred and some other plaintive little female voice which could be heard bleating occasionally: 'Cy, Cykie, Cy', Jemima made her call brief.

  'You're right, Cy, right as ever. I think there is a good programme in the "Golden Lads" story - or at any rate something worth investigating further.'

  'Jem!' explained Cy with ebullience, dropping the receiver, or at least one of the receivers he was holding, with a crash. When normal service was resumed: 'I knew you would see it my way.'

  'The evening paper made me see it your way.'

  'Oh yes, most exciting.' Which told Jemima that Cy had not yet read the evening paper.

  'When you do read it, you'll see why I thought I'd start with the Oxford Bloods, as I believe they're called.'

  'Most exciting, most exciting!' Cy continued to exclaim. This was surely carrying blankness a little too far even for Cy. His next words provided the clue.

  'You don't have my memo?'

  'Memo? What memo?'

  'Miss Lewis, Miss Lewis!' Clearly the bellowing was about to begin.

  Either to obviate it, or because Miss Lewis had an unspoken alliance with Jemima on the subject of Cy and his lightning projects, Miss Lewis now broke firmly into the conversation.

  'I think Mr Fredericks is referring to the memo concerning Miss Tiggie Jones,' she observed in a neutral voice. 'Although he has not yet finished dictating it. In fact he has not gone beyond the first paragraph. However I understand Miss Tiggie Jones is to act as a' - delicate pause from Miss Lewis - 'a student observer on your new programme.'

  Complete silence from Jemima Shore.

  Into this silence the plaintive female voice of one of Cy's telephoners, which had happily fallen still in the last few minutes, was heard again.

  'Golden lads and girls all must,' sang the little voice, 'Like television come to dust.' Something like a giggle followed. 'Ooh Cykie, I've been listening to every word.'

  With an unpleasant feeling Jemima recognized not only the giggle but also the androgynous singer of her anonymous telephone call.

  The feeling of unpleasantness was intensified when Cy Fredericks cried out with pleasure:

  'Tiggie! Darling, where have you been? I've been trying to reach you on the telephone. We have so much to discuss—'

  Then to Jemima, still on her end of the line, as though introducing two people at a party:

  'Jemima, I really must introduce you to Miss Tiggie Jones.'

  4

  Staircase Thirteen

  'That staircase will be the death of someone,' said Jemima Shore. She added fiercely as she nursed her ankle: 'After our recent encounter I only hope it's young Lord Saffron. Staircase Thirteen, I see. Most appropriate.'

  'How about Tiggie Jones?' suggested Cherry. 'Supposing she ever gets as far as Oxford.' Cherry had accompanied Jemima down to Oxford in the latter's white Mercedes. That was because Tiggie Jones, billed to introduce Jemima to 'le tout Oxford' as Cy Fredericks put it, had failed to show up at Holland Park Mansions on time. Or anything like on time. After waiting an hour, Jemima with difficulty resisted the temptation to make a vengeful call to Cy. Instead she had summoned Cherry from her office.

  'Come and hold my hand among the golden ones.' Nothing loath, Cherry had arrived with great swiftness, pausing only to exchange a high-necked clinging jersey to something more in keeping with the spirit of youth as she understood it - which meant a T-shirt both clinging and revealing. As a result Cherry was now shivering at the bottom of a staircase in Rochester College, Oxford. And Jemima, who had just fallen down the same staircase, was trying to comfort her - 'No, go on, Cherry, take my coat, I've got my left-wing fury to keep me warm' — as well as rub her own ankle.

  The first steps were made of stone. Dark, vanishing upwards above their heads, the rest of the staircase was made of wood, which creaked from time to time despite the fact that no one was using it. It was difficult to negotiate not only because it was steep and badly lit, but because the distance between the treads was so high. Jemima had stumbled at the top of the last flight and had only broken her fall by clutching the thin wooden rail.

  The staircase ended in an arch. It was very cold in the stone interior

  and slightly dank. The presence of a bathroom to their left and a lavatory to their right was also unaesthetic. A further staircase leading downwards had a cardboard notice reading: TO THE WASHING MACHINE, DO NOT USE AFTER 11 P.M. C.L. MOSSBANKER. Someone had scrawled: 'To hell with that' beneath it. Someone else had added: 'And high water.' A further hand still had added: 'I'm pissed off with late night Lady Macbeths trying to wash it off after getting it off.' Jemima had a feeling the dialogue was only just beginning.

  It was difficult to believe, in view of all this, that the arch in front of her eyes formed part of a facade rated by some as the finest thing Hawksmoor ever did, outstripping the glory of neighbouring St John's.

  The next excitement was the appearance of a man they assumed to be Professor Mossbanker, from the fact that he emerged from the ground-floor rooms beneath the arch, which bore his name in gold letters.

  The professor was blinking and rubbing his eyes. Then he replaced the large thick spectacles, which with their heavy black rims made him appear almost the caricature of the absent-minded academic. Looking at Jemima with some surprise and at Cherry in her ‘I-shirt with disbelief, he asked abruptly what time it was.

  Jemima told him.

  'How odd!' he exclaimed. 'People generally fall down this staircase at night. That and the infernal washing machine leave one no peace. What is the compulsion, I wonder, which makes modern youth want to wash so noisily? And at night.' On which note he turned on his heel and retired back into his rooms. The heavy door shut.

  'I think he's done that sporting thing.' Cherry sounded rather uncertain.

  'Sporting thing! I don't call that very sporting. He could at least have given us a glass of dry sherry—'

  'No, Saffron just told us. When you slam your door it's called sporting your oak or something. Look, it's got no handle. You can't open it from outside. There's an inner door as well. Saffron had the same set-up.'

  'Like The Light of the World,' commented Jemima, who was an admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites and intended to visit Holman Hunt's celebrated picture in Keble College chapel after lunch, if she could hobble there. At the same time, agreeable memories of other sported oaks in her Cambridge days, doors in men's colleges shut not so much in her face as behind her back on entrance, rather agreeable memories, came back
to her.

  The sudden arrival of a tiny girl dressed as some kind of clown in a white ruffled pierrot top and very baggy white trousers worn over high-heeled black shoes, distracted them both. The clown figure rolled her huge dark eyes, delineated in black, panda fashion, in Jemima's direction and sucked her finger. Her very short very black hair was topped by a conical hat with a pompom. It was not clear whether this childishness was genuine and thus mildly unfortunate, or assumed and thus extremely irritating.

  'Jemima, forgive, forgive,' whispered the clown. 'You've no idea of the perils I encountered on my journey. Oh, if only I had been with you! I know I would have felt so safe.'

  As Tiggie Jones carried on in this vein, rolling her huge eyes the while, Jemima wondered how it was that this diminutive creature, apparently lacking in all intelligence, always managed to put her so neatly at a disadvantage. I mean, how did you cope with the annoyance of being called safe by someone you believed to be a mere ten years younger than yourself if that?

  'And didn't you just adore him? Isn't he foxy? Tiggie was murmuring. 'Saffer. What a naughty boy. Still we can't all be good all the time like you.'

  'This is unbearable.' Jemima Shore pronounced the word quite distinctly. There was a short silence into which Cherry contributed the diplomatic sentence: 'Poor Jem's twisted her ankle coming down this lethal staircase. She's in agony.'

  'Oh poor darling.' The next moment - Jemima never quite knew how it happened - Tiggie had somehow produced a long cashmere scarf from about her person, possibly from around her tiny waist, and easing off Jemima's pale leather boot, had most deftly bound up the swelling ankle.

  'Now you've got to have a rest.' A faint flush of effort touched Tiggie Jones' pearly white cheeks, allowing Jemima to perceive that much of the whiteness was due to liquid white make-up. 'And a glass of champagne. For shock. Proffy will simply have to provide.'

  Before Jemima could stop her, Tiggie had banged boldly upon Professor Mossbanker's heavily shut door - his sported oak. After a few moments, and a few more bangs, the figure of Professor Mossbanker reappeared. Jemima waited for his wrath to fall. To her surprise, the professor's face actually cleared.

  'Antigone, it's you,' he said with some warmth. 'Did Eugenia get back from Washington last night? I've just read the paper she read in Rome in December at the Conference of Classical and Psychological Studies: Neurosis and Anxiety as depicted in fourth-century Greek vases. Excellent, quite excellent.'

  But the professor, despite an evident affection for his colleague Professor Eugenia Jones, mother of Antigone, still did not have any champagne. 'Alas poor Academe, alas poor Academe,' he cried. 'And especially poor Proffy! Why don't you try our rich young man upstairs? I could do with a glass myself. Make sure it's cold, won't you?'

  But the professor, if he had no champagne, did have a very comfortable sofa, from which he hastened to dump a weight of learned periodicals and papers. Then he sat down on it. Jemima, who had imagined the sofa had been cleared for her, then sat on a much less comfortable chair with a certain wry amusement. It was left to Tiggie to fetch the champagne. It did come from upstairs and was borne down by its owner, the occupant of the top room - none other than Viscount Saffron.

  So for the second time that day, and after all too short an interval, Jemima found herself gazing into the handsome, sulky, strangely un-English face of that notorious Oxford Blood, putative subject of a Megalith Television programme.

  'Is there going to be a party?' enquired Professor Mossbanker, breaking the slightly embarrassed silence. Even Tiggie now seemed to suspect that Jemima's previous encounter with Saffron had been something of a failure and that had she been present - as hired by Megalith - to perform the introduction it might have gone better. The professor alone amongst them displayed a mixture of elation and curiosity, as though he were an anthropologist about to witness strange tribal rites. Jemima thought it surprising that a don, however remote from reality as the professor appeared to be, should not have had his fill of parties, living as he did on the same staircase as Saffron. Or perhaps scientists - it appeared that Proffy was some kind of scientist rather than an anthropologist - were not invited to parties.

  But Tiggie Jones cleared that one up. 'Proffy loves parties, don't you? He says he got to like parties in the war when he was a spy. Weren't you, Proffy? Apparently parties are awfully important for spying. But I think it's because he's got so many children. He finds parties outside the home rather peaceful compared to life inside Chillington Road. He hates the young, of course, having so many children, but he does love champagne!'

  'How many children do you have, Professor Mossbanker?' Jemima was relieved to find some conventional subject on which she could make polite conversation with the man obliged by Tiggie to be her host. At which a look of deep suspicion crossed the professor's face.

  'Oh, the usual number, the usual large number,' he said quite crossly. ‘I don't know why people always expect me to have that kind of information at my fingertips. You should ask Eugenia if you're really interested.'

  'Eleanor,' put in Tiggie, blinking her panda eyes. Jemima realized she was trying hard not to giggle. 'Eugenia is my mother. Eleanor is your wife.'

  'Eleanor, I thought I said Eleanor. You confused me, Antigone.' 'And Proffy, you have eight children.' 'Exactly, the usual large number.'

  'Amid the wonders of Professor Mossbanker's philoprogeniture, one question remains,' remarked Saffron in his habitually languid manner. 'Am I going to open this champagne here or am I going to carry Jemima

  Shore heroically back up the staircase to my rooms? A terrifyingly macho thought, but I might impress you, Jemima, and then we could re-create it for television. It would do wonders for my image, a little tarnished at the moment: you know, the monkey lord, Greystoke and all that, so sweet.'

  Jemima smiled coldly. She had the feeling she looked much as the professor had done a few moments ago when asked the exact number of his children.

  The next thing she knew, Saffron had whisked her up in his arms and was carrying her quite fast back up the steep staircase. He was surprisingly muscular: Jemima, slim as she was, was tall. Saffron's languid manner and pale complexion were something of a delusion. Besides, there had been some sporting equipment about in his rooms, otherwise more noted for the smell of expensive Rigaud candles and the sight of empty champagne bottles. Jemima had noticed a cricket bat in a corner (was it quite the season, this icy spring?), a tennis racket and a couple of squash rackets.

  'I boxed for my school,' murmured Saffron in her ear. 'I always thought it would come in useful.'

  Back in his rooms, Jemima sat down on another sofa - a more elegant one this time, covered in dark green velvet with a lot of patchwork cushions - and gazed up at him. Yes he could have been a boxer, once you got over the illusion of effeminacy, or perhaps decadence was a better word. Saffron's shoulders were not particularly broad but he was tall and wasn't that nose slightly flattened out? It was certainly not the perfect aristocratic shape of her imagination.

  Then from her new position on the sofa, she saw something she had missed on her previous visit. Standing on the table beside her was a framed photograph, a family group. The background was a large country house, late Elizabethan - Saffron Ivy itself. The figure of Lord St Ives, so familiar from the newspapers, was easy to recognize, and the woman next to him with her hand on the head of a large dog was presumably his wife. But what attracted Jemima's attention was the figure at the end of the row, a figure dressed in nurse's uniform; allowing for the time lapse and the harrowing conditions under which she had visited her at the Hospice, she was almost sure that she was gazing once more at the features of Nurse Elsie Connolly.

  'Oh, that,' said Saffron carelessly, 'that's my parents' Silver Wedding. I was four at the time - the happy afterthought. Very happy, at least for them. Look, there's my cousin Andrew Iverstone - you know, the famous Fascist beast, looking sick as mud at my mere existence. Sixteen years later he still hasn't forgiven me for
being a boy. And Cousin Daphne.'

  'Who's the other boy holding your hand? He looks a little older.'

  Saffron sounded even more cheerful. 'Oh that's my cousin, Jack Iverstone, Cousin Andrew's son. He would be looking forward to getting the lot if it wasn't for me. He's at Oxford too, as a matter of fact. In his last year.'

  'And does he hate your guts as well?'

  'Christ, no. Jack doesn't hate anyone's guts. He's a member of the SDP and it doesn't go with gut-hating. Pure reaction against Cousin Andrew of course. With parents like that, you would be a member of the SDP.'

  Jemima forbore to say that she had indeed flirted with the possibility not so many years ago, before returning to her traditional Labour stance -and without Jack Iverstone's excuse. Instead she asked: 'And the woman at the end of the row, the nurse?'

  There was a tiny pause, so brief that Jemima even wondered afterwards whether she had imagined it.

  'Oh, that was someone, an old retainer if you like, she used to be around a lot in my childhood; my mother was quite ill after I was born, quite depressed I believe, despite the Super-Happy event; something to do with her age I daresay.'

  'And is she still around? The nurse. I mean, we could interview her,' Jemima improvised. 'Part of your privileged background. A live-in nurse at the age of twenty.'

  'Privileged! Nurse Elsie ... You have to be joking.'

  Saffron had abandoned his usual languid tone for a kind of bitter briskness, 'No, as a matter of fact, she's dead. Died the other day. Of cancer. I went to see her. It was horrible. Very upsetting. My mother forced me to go and see her. The trouble with my mother, she's a saint, and she expects everyone to do likewise. Only it's no trouble to her, and a great deal of trouble to the rest of us. In short I wish I hadn't gone, for any number of reasons, and if Ma hadn't bullied me I would have got out of it altogether because Nurse Elsie died suddenly the day after I visited her.