Oxford Blood

by Antonia Fraser

  'He's rather bright, you know,' went on Kerry Barber, still more surprisingly. 'Good mind. Much brighter for example than his cousin Jack of our college. A good man, but almost frighteningly conventional in his thinking. To make up for that dreadful father, I suppose. Hours in libraries and very few minutes of original thought.'

  'What's he reading - Jack?' enquired Jemima.

  'Oh history of course,' replied Kerry Barber in what for him passed for a malicious remark.

  Jemima grappled with the unexpected phenomenon of Saffron being naturally intelligent.

  'You don't mean he actually did any work?' she asked incredulously.

  'Good heavens, no! And it's perfectly disgraceful that he hasn't been sent down. A prime example of the sort of thing COMPCAMP would put an end to. Coming from a comprehensive school, he would of course—' And Dr Barber launched into his favourite subject. To Jemima's general satisfaction, however - for was he not now saying exactly what she wanted him to say on the Golden Kids programme? Provided she could somehow get it past the eagle eye of Cy Fredericks. Cy had a tiresome habit of returning to Megalithic House after weeks of absence in some luxurious haunt, as though by instinct, just as a programme-maker was trying to slip a fast one past him at the editing stage.

  All the same, she judged it right to leave after about twenty minutes of elucidation on the aims of COMPCAMP. She did so as gracefully as possible, pausing at the door of the room to deposit a five-pound note in the collecting box.

  'For my two delicious sherries.'

  'Good heavens, you could have had many more for that!' exclaimed Barber generously. 'Are you sure you don't want to come back? I feel I've only just scratched the surface of our discussion. COMPCAMP is such an important issue.' He sighed as though Jemima was perhaps not the only television interviewer to back away through his door, leaving the depths of his campaign unprobed. 'Ah well, another time. But I must say I envy you having the forum of television for your views.'

  'We'll share it,' promised Jemima, generous in her turn, vowing inwardly to defeat Cy even if it meant bribing Miss Lewis to muck up his return flight arrangements for the first time in her life.

  Jemima wandered back into Pond Quad still thinking about envy. She gazed rather distractedly into the large round stone-built 'pond' itself, with its statue of St Lucy, Virgin and Martyr, in the centre. As a result of undergraduate binges St Lucy sometimes had to endure further forms of martyrdom. She was currently wearing a large painted notice on her bosom: 'St Lucy votes SDP.' Below someone had written: 'I know. That's why they killed her.' How old were the golden carp in the pond supposed to be? Old enough not to want to go on television programmes, whatever the motive. Old enough not to envy any of the hurrying undergraduates who thronged the quad.

  One of the undergraduates stopped and smiled at Jemima.

  'Are you going to feature the fish in your programme? They are golden.'

  It was Jack Iverstone. He was carrying a pile of books, as on their first acquaintance in Saffron's rooms, and Jemima was reminded of Kerry Barber's judgement: 'hours in libraries and very few minutes of original thought'. She decided to put it down to the natural disdain of the economist for the historian.

  'I've just been to see Saffer,' he went on. 'I must say he has the strength of ten. Enormous gash in his head and he's asking me to smuggle in some champagne for a celebration.'

  'A celebration?' queried Jemima incredulously. 'What on earth can he have to celebrate beyond being holed up in the Radcliffe?'

  Jack Iverstone continued to look at her with his easy charming smile. But there was now something quizzical about the smile which she did not quite understand.

  'You know Saffer,' he said after a pause. 'He celebrates the oddest things. Why don't you ask him yourself?'

  10

  Intellectual Advantages

  It was Jemima's intention to visit Saffron as soon as she got her interview with Proffy out of the way: she thought it would be good to be able to contrast the Mossbanker way of life with that of the heroically abstinent Barbers, for she somehow doubted whether Proffy and his clever wife Eleanor had a collection box in their North Oxford house - that is, if Proffy's appetite for food and drink at the Lycee restaurant and The Punting Heaven were anything to go by.

  She still wondered at the nature of Saffron's celebration and the meaning of Jack lverstone's quizzical glance as she collected her car from the Martyrs car park and drove up St Giles, leaving Rochester College, Saffron's theoretical residence, on her right (and the Radcliffe Infirmary, his actual dwelling on her left). Arrival at the Mossbankers' house, however, drove these thoughts out of her mind. Chillington Road was a pretty tree-lined backwater, part of a network of similar roads off the Banbury Road. Thus the exterior of the Mossbankers' house, despite the ugliness of its late-Victorian architecture, was agreeably tranquil, softened as its facade was by blossom, the door masked by a weeping tree. The interior on the other hand was the reverse of tranquil. In fact Jemima's first reaction was to decide that marriage between consenting Oxford intellectuals should probably be banned for the future (unless sworn to be childless).

  To begin with, the combined force of Mossbanker children was in itself daunting. Were there only eight of them? Alternatively were these tow-headed infants and occasional tow-headed adolescents really all Mossbankers? So many of them seemed to be the same age. Jemima had not thought to enquire from the Professor whether the Mossbanker Eight included twins or even triplets: but then what made her think he would have known the answer to such an essentially domestic question? As

  Tiggie had expressed it on their first meeting, he liked having a lot of children (the children themselves he rather disliked).

  However, it was not so much the sheer mass of Mossbankers which persuaded her that intellectuals should not be allowed to marry each other. Nor did she necessarily ascribe the untidiness-beyond-parody of the North Oxford house, books and potties competing for attention, frequently doing an exciting balancing act in the same pile, to the presence of an intellectual mother. After all, take the case of Jemima's fiercely clever friend, Dr Marigold Milton, whose students were notoriously terrified into an appreciation of English literature which lasted them for the rest of their lives no matter how they tried to get rid of it. Marigold Milton had as a matter of fact given birth to four children, making a point of reading Proust between pangs of labour (she was a quick reader), yet her house was so exactly polished that even the students wiped their feet reverently on entering it, before having their essays merrily pulled to pieces.

  No, it was apparently the fatal combination of both Mossbankers which made life in Chillington Road such an ordeal: Jemima knew that Eleanor Mossbanker had as Proffy's pupil gained her own First in something or other before leaving scholarship for parturition in a dedicated way. For the effect of this union of intellects was, as Jemima quickly discovered, to make the Chillington Road house a kind of debating chamber concerning the education, past, present and to come, of the numerous Mossbanker offspring, into which any unwary newcomer was immediately plunged.

  Proffy let her into the house, trampling on a small bicycle as he did so (admittedly the alternative would have been to hurdle it). He guided Jemima towards the sitting room, negotiating various physical hazards - a carry-cot, another bicycle and two satchels - in the same ruthless manner.

  'Eleanor is just giving him—' he look closer '—I mean her, an intelligence test to see whether the last report from the local comprehensive has anything to be said for it at all. Can any child of ours, can any child, really not be able to read at the age of eight?'

  'Ten, Proffy, actually,' said a sulky voice emanating from one of the tow-heads. Jemima got the impression that Proffy's boasted dislike of the young might actually be reciprocated.

  'Exactly!' cried the Professor with the triumphant air of one who had just proved a point. But the dark Egyptian head bent over the blonde child was surely that of Eugenia Jones. While Eleanor Mossbanker had to be
the fair Saxonesque beauty, heavy but not unbecomingly so, some years younger than Eugenia, with a baby in a sling round her neck (which also contained a couple of books). Not for the first time the professor had mixed up their names.

  It was Eleanor Mossbanker who proceeded to give Jemima a warm but hasty welcome. The welcome was hasty because she wasted no time in scrabbling in the sling for one of the books, the baby giving a single regal shriek at this interruption to its dignity.

  'There, what did I tell you?' she demanded, as though continuing some previous conversation, although as far as Jemima was aware, they had never met before. 'Isn't that a ridiculously unimaginative poetry book for a child of seven? At that age I was reading Yeats, or at any rate—'

  'For God's sake, Eleanor!' shouted Proffy quite angrily - and for once there was no doubt who he was addressing. 'You chose that school.'

  'You did, Mum, honestly,' said one of the tow-heads, looking up with a mild expression from a rather noisy television set for a moment or two. 'Proffy chose St Albert's and then it was your turn and you chose Mandells.'

  'But I've never even been there,' countered Eleanor Mossbanker heatedly, poking the offending poetry book back alongside the regal baby and adjusting the sling.

  'Of course you've never been there,' contributed another tow-head, also flat out on the floor in front of the television. 'That's because you've always been to St Albert's by mistake, thinking that was the school you chose.' Then he turned the sound up on the television. No wonder Proffy went to parties to get away and drink champagne, thought Jemima.

  'Could you all be a bit quieter while we're watching telly?' the first tow-head threw over his shoulder.

  'Sigi and Lucas are taking part in a controlled television experiment to see if watching television six hours a day interferes with their enjoyment of reading the classics,' explained the Professor. This left Jemima wondering wearily how on earth she was going to detach him sufficiently from the fascinating topic of his offspring's mental development in order to discuss her own television programme. Champagne might once again be the answer.

  One of the further ironies of the Mossbanker household was that compared to the ancient splendour of, for example, Rochester College, it gave the impression of great penury as well as discomfort. No wonder Proffy had fantasized at the Chimneysweepers' Dinner about a house at Dives' gate. Jemima did not imagine eight children left a great deal to live on out of a don's salary, particularly one who enjoyed champagne.

  In the event the question of the programme did not arise. For at that moment the figure of Tiggie Jones, clad in very small pink shorts covered in butterflies, darted into the room through the French windows. Some iridescent butterflies gleamed in her dark hair. She posed for a moment, head on one side, pinky-purple lips pursed, as though considering the order of kisses, before laying her long lashes against Jemima's cheek, then Proffy's, then Eleanor's, finally her mother's. The Mossbanker children she ignored, much as they ignored her.

  ‘I've just come from seeing Saffer,' she pronounced. 'Such foxy news.' There was a pause. 'We're going to get married,' she said. 'Don't you envy me?' continued Tiggie, with her pretty little cat's smile, addressing no one in particular. 'I'm going to be Lady Saffron. And I'm going to be terribly, terribly rich.'

  There was a sharp intake of breath somewhere in the room. 'No—'

  'Stop it, Eleanor,' said the professor.

  But it was Eugenia Jones, still half crouched beside an infant Mossbanker, who now gazed in evident horror at her daughter.

  'Antigone, you can't be serious! This is one of your jokes. Proffy, do something!'

  It was odd, thought Jemima, how women were constantly asking Proffy to do something - as Fanny Iverstone had urged him to do something after the discovery of Saffron's body at The Punting Heaven - and yet here was a man whose detachment from awkward reality was sufficiently marked for him to regularly and unabashedly mix up the Christian names of his wife and his mistress. Engaging as Proffy was in conversation, Jemima suspected that there was something quite sweetly selfish at the heart of his lifestyle, for all the physical impression he gave of heavy patriarchal reliability.

  Perhaps it was the perpetual hope of discovering this phantasmagoric reliability which had kept Eugenia Jones in thrall to him for so long. Weakness or selfishness in a man was often a most successful grappling-hook ... why else had Eugenia Jones remained devoted to Proffy throughout so many years, including the years when he married his brilliant pupil Eleanor and procreated all those tow-headed children; the children to whom Eugenia was now administering intelligence tests?

  'I think your mother means something like: you're throwing yourself away.' Proffy spoke in that slightly irritable tone which Jemima noticed he tended to adopt when obliged to form part of a conversation as opposed to holding forth in more light-hearted monologue. 'Considering all your intellectual advantages,' he added, 'that kind of line of attack.'

  Was he being serious? Intellectual advantages! Tiggie Jones, the toast of the gossip columns (which would be lost without her if she married, or again perhaps not), Tiggie, the happily idiotic Golden Kid, Miss Tiggie who was or was not screwing Cy Fredericks, in the words of Saffron himself - Jemima was interrupted in these reflections by Eugenia Jones.

  'Antigone, have you no shame?' The fierce voice was worthy of Dr Marigold Milton herself, ringing the editor of Literature to complain about a misprint in her review. 'You got a very good Second, but touches of Alpha there in certain papers, admittedly in English—'

  'Your mother means that you would have got a First if you had done any work at all. And now you're throwing yourself away on a very rich man, two years or so your junior, so that you will eventually endure the unspeakable fate of being Marchioness of St Ives, mistress of Saffron Ivy. I think that's what your mother means.'

  'Oh Mum!' cried Tiggie in a tone of sheer exasperation. It was the first time Jemima had heard her speak without any affectation. She even sounded quite fond of her mother. But then Jemima was seeing Tiggie through new eyes in more ways than one. A good Second in English. For a moment, thinking of the constructed personality Tiggie now displayed, hedonism not to say sheer silliness and irresponsibility strictly to the fore, Jemima found herself agreeing with Eugenia that Tiggie was doing something called wasting her opportunities. Then she pulled herself up. Wasn't Tiggie actually using her so-called intellectual advantages to get exactly what she wanted? A rich husband. Purple and fine linen for the rest of her life. Or at least until they divorced - and then a good lawyer would probably see to it that the supply of purple did not diminish for Saffron's ex-wife.

  The exasperation, and the naturalness, passed quickly from Tiggie. 'Saffer and I are going to settle down. We're going to be old folks. Isn't that sweet?' And she did a little pirouette, setting all the gauzy butterflies in her short dark hair a-quiver. 'We're going to have lots and lots of children just like you, Proffy. Mum, don't be cross. You'll love the library at Saffron Ivy. You can live in it if you like. You can have a wendy house in the library. A sort of hut. Think how adorable.'

  'I know the library at Saffron Ivy,' was all Eugenia lones vouchsafed by way of reply.

  'Oh really,' said Tiggie incuriously, 'I didn't know you'd ever been there. I've been there.'

  'There was a life on earth before you were born, Antigone,' said Proffy.

  Eugenia Jones herself did not speak again but turned back to the Mossbanker child on the floor, who had by now joined the ranks of the television viewers and was highly indignant at being recalled to an intelligence test (the upbringing of the young Mossbankers, thought Jemima, unlike that of Tiggie Jones, was full of intellectual disadvantages). But Jemima saw that Eugenia Jones' eyes were full of tears.

  Even more astonishing, Jemima surprised on Proffy's own face a look of absolute despair. The look was purely momentary, transforming Proffy's normally benign if eccentric countenance into something really rather tragic as if a mask had been applied. Then he relaxed, blinked
and patted Eugenia on the shoulder. The whole incident had not lasted more than a few seconds.

  It was not time to press Proffy on the subject of Golden Kids. Jemima departed as rapidly as possible, unnoticed by the majority of the Mossbanker family, feeling that a visit to the putative bridegroom was now indicated. As to the motive behind his unlikely engagement, as Jack Iverstone had suggested with that quizzical gleam in his eye, 'Why don't you ask him yourself?'

  Her first sight of Saffron however had the immediate effect of driving his engagement from her mind. She thought instead of his blood. That was because Saffron, although propped up on high pillows, and smiling at her quite strongly, was demonstrably still wired or tubed or taped up to some form of blood transfusion.

  'AB blood like readers of The Times' Jemima remembered all over again the note sent to her at the Martyrs on the eve of the dinner, which circumstances had not yet allowed her time to discuss with Saffron, let alone investigate its contents for herself. Was now the time to discuss it when blood - presumably AB, the fairly rare group - was so obviously being replenished in his veins? On the other hand, perhaps Saffron still felt too weak to discuss a subject which was potentially so painful. While Jemima hesitated, she heard the sharp sound of a crackling uniform behind her, and she was accosted by a woman's voice speaking with great command and indignation in a strong Scottish accent. Jemima swung round. This was clearly a very senior type of nurse. She was also black.

  'Ye may be his relative or ye may not - I'm thinking this laddie has an unco' lot of relatives all of them gairrls—' she pronounced the word with relish '—only one visitor at a time, relative or no relative; and that in visiting hours.' The nurse stopped. She stared at Jemima Shore. Then she beamed. There was no other word for it.